Inflation Reality

A personal inflation tracker dashboard built with Vite + React. Visualizes BLS CPI-U data — headline vs. core inflation, category breakdowns, average prices, and trends — with charts powered by Recharts and Excel export via the xlsx library.

Data

CPI numbers are fetched from the FRED API at build time by scripts/fetch-fred.mjs and written to public/cpi.json. The app loads that file at runtime and falls back to src/data/fallback.json if it is unavailable. YoY figures use NSA series (e.g. CPIAUCNS); MoM figures use seasonally-adjusted series (e.g. CPIAUCSL). A GitHub Actions schedule refreshes the data on the 13th and 16th of each month. Set the FRED_API_KEY repo secret to enable fetching.

The dashboard also displays alternative official inflation measures alongside headline CPI and core CPI — Core PCE (PCEPILFE), Median CPI (MEDCPIM159SFRBCLE), 16% Trimmed-Mean CPI (TRMMEANCPIM159SFRBCLE), and Sticky-Price Core CPI (CORESTICKM159SFRBATL) — all sourced from FRED via the same build-time pipeline. Each carries metadata and a FRED series badge for full provenance.

Development

npm install
npm run dev

Build

npm run build      # outputs to dist/
npm run preview    # serve the production build locally

Deployment

Pushes to main are built and published to the gh-pages branch by the GitHub Actions workflow in .github/workflows/deploy.yml. The Vite base path is set to /inflation-reality/ to match the GitHub Pages project URL.

Live site: https://derektm17.github.io/inflation-reality/