diff --git a/docs/development_history/dashboard-improvements-research.md b/docs/development_history/dashboard-improvements-research.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d3db015
--- /dev/null
+++ b/docs/development_history/dashboard-improvements-research.md
@@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
+# Dashboard Improvements — Research Phase
+
+## Summary
+Researched 10 comparable monitoring/dashboard systems to inform swactor's dashboard improvement plan.
+
+## Systems Analyzed
+- **Actor runtimes**: Erlang Observer (GUI/CLI/Web), Akka Insights, Ray Dashboard, Orleans Dashboard
+- **Async/runtime tools**: tokio-console, Lunatic
+- **Message/infrastructure**: RabbitMQ Management, Consul UI, Nomad UI
+- **Web frameworks**: Phoenix LiveDashboard
+
+## Key Findings
+1. **Time-series history** is table-stakes — every system provides it
+2. **Actor detail drill-down** is universal (Observer has 6-tab process info, Orleans has grain state inspection)
+3. **Search/filter** exists in every system
+4. **Warning/anomaly detection** (tokio-console's lint system) is a high-value differentiator
+5. **Topology visualization** (Consul golden metrics, Observer supervision tree) is rare but powerful
+
+## Implementation Plan
+8 feature stages defined (see `CLAUDE/notes/feature-stages/`):
+1. Time-Series History Infrastructure
+2. Actor Detail Drill-Down
+3. Search and Filter
+4. Per-Worker Utilization Visualization
+5. Warning/Anomaly Detection
+6. Actor-to-Actor Message Flow Topology
+7. Per-Actor Logging
+8. Per-Message-Type Breakdown