Me neither and this is somehow scary. I'd prefer just an UI kit with guidelines for integration with backend.

Because it is meant to be a full stack framework.

Also, it's not really a UI kit. Although it comes with premise widgets and styles, these are just suggestions. The real meat is how the data gets to your widgets, letting you do whatever you want with it. That structure is the core of Dashing.

However, there is a decoupled version in the works with the integration guidelines you mention.

Check out Gridster.js then - http://gridsterjs.net

The server-side code needs to generate the server-sent events. You can probably switch it out easily.