diff --git a/nix/host-modules/swarm-grafana/dashboards/forge.json b/nix/host-modules/swarm-grafana/dashboards/forge.json
index acb08a2e..1102ae2f 100644
--- a/nix/host-modules/swarm-grafana/dashboards/forge.json
+++ b/nix/host-modules/swarm-grafana/dashboards/forge.json
@@ -379,39 +379,35 @@
     },
     {
       "id": 30,
-      "type": "timeseries",
-      "title": "Open issues by label",
-      "description": "Per-label backlog. Like every panel on this board it is an INVENTORY gauge: it says how many open issues carry each label right now, never how fast they arrive or close. A flat line is a real reading, not a broken scrape. Note for whoever enables the next forge metric: forgejo reads its [metrics] section at STARTUP, so a newly enabled series does not exist until that process restarts — a config merge alone does not do it, and an absent series says absent without ever saying why. Check the process, not the metric.",
+      "type": "bargauge",
+      "title": "Issues by label — every issue ever, ranked",
+      "description": "How the whole issue corpus is distributed across labels, biggest first. NOT the open backlog: this metric counts open and closed issues alike, which is checkable from this board alone — the top label here is far larger than the Issues open stat beside it, and no single label can outnumber the issues it is a subset of. So read it as the shape of what the project has worked on, not as what is left. It is also a RANKING of one moment rather than a time series: the label set is as wide as the tracker's, so one line per label is unreadable by construction, and the history of any single label is an ad-hoc query, not a panel. Colour carries no meaning here; the axis carries the identity. If the panel is empty, check whether the forgejo process restarted since [metrics] last changed — a merged config alone does not enable a series, and an absent series never says why it is absent.",
       "datasource": { "type": "prometheus", "uid": "@datasourceUid@" },
-      "gridPos": { "h": 7, "w": 24, "x": 0, "y": 19 },
+      "gridPos": { "h": 16, "w": 24, "x": 0, "y": 19 },
       "targets": [
         {
           "refId": "A",
           "datasource": { "type": "prometheus", "uid": "@datasourceUid@" },
-          "expr": "gitea_issues_by_label",
-          "legendFormat": "{{label}}"
+          "expr": "sort_desc(gitea_issues_by_label)",
+          "legendFormat": "{{label}}",
+          "instant": true
         }
       ],
       "fieldConfig": {
         "defaults": {
           "unit": "short",
           "decimals": 0,
-          "color": { "mode": "palette-classic" },
-          "custom": {
-            "drawStyle": "line",
-            "lineWidth": 1,
-            "fillOpacity": 0,
-            "showPoints": "never",
-            "spanNulls": false,
-            "axisSoftMin": 0
-          },
+          "min": 0,
+          "color": { "mode": "fixed", "fixedColor": "semi-dark-blue" },
           "noValue": "no series — check whether the forgejo process restarted since [metrics] last changed; an absent series never says why it is absent"
         },
         "overrides": []
       },
       "options": {
-        "legend": { "displayMode": "list", "placement": "bottom", "showLegend": true, "calcs": [] },
-        "tooltip": { "mode": "multi", "sort": "desc" }
+        "orientation": "horizontal",
+        "displayMode": "basic",
+        "showUnfilled": true,
+        "reduceOptions": { "calcs": ["lastNotNull"], "fields": "", "values": false }
       }
     }
   ]