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From grafana-app-sdk
Create, modify, and organise Grafana dashboards including panels, variables, transformations, and alerting.
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/grafana-app-sdk:dashboardingThe summary Claude sees in its skill listing — used to decide when to auto-load this skill
Dashboards are JSON documents stored in Grafana. Every dashboard has panels, variables, time
Creates production-ready Grafana dashboards with reusable panels, template variables, and provisioning for version-controlled deployment of Prometheus, Loki, and other data source metrics.
Build monitoring dashboards that answer real operator questions for Grafana, SigNoz, and similar platforms. Use when turning metrics into a working dashboard instead of a vanity board.
Creates and manages production-ready Grafana dashboards for monitoring applications, infrastructure, SLOs, and KPIs using Prometheus metrics and RED/USE methods.
Share bugs, ideas, or general feedback.
Dashboards are JSON documents stored in Grafana. Every dashboard has panels, variables, time range, and refresh settings. Understanding the JSON schema lets you programmatically create and modify dashboards via the API or Grafana Assistant tools.
{
"title": "My Dashboard",
"uid": "my-dashboard-v1",
"tags": ["service", "production"],
"time": { "from": "now-1h", "to": "now" },
"refresh": "30s",
"timezone": "browser",
"schemaVersion": 41,
"templating": { "list": [] },
"annotations": { "list": [] },
"panels": []
}
Key fields:
uid - stable identifier used in URLs and API calls; keep it short and meaningfulschemaVersion - use 41 for Grafana 11+time.from / to - supports relative (now-1h, now-7d) and absolute ISO timestampsrefresh - auto-refresh interval ("30s", "1m", "5m", "" for off)| Panel | Use case |
|---|---|
| Time series | Any metric over time; the default choice for counters, rates, gauges |
| Stat | Single current value with optional sparkline (e.g. uptime, current RPS) |
| Gauge | Percent or value against a min/max (e.g. disk usage %) |
| Bar gauge | Compare multiple values side by side (e.g. top 10 services by RPS) |
| Table | Multi-column data (e.g. alert list with labels) |
| Heatmap | Distribution over time (e.g. request duration histogram) |
| Logs | Loki log streams |
| Traces | Tempo trace search |
| Text | Markdown documentation panels |
| Candlestick | OHLC/financial data (or min/max/avg patterns) |
| Node graph | Service dependency graphs |
{
"id": 1,
"type": "timeseries",
"title": "Request Rate",
"gridPos": { "x": 0, "y": 0, "w": 12, "h": 8 },
"datasource": { "type": "prometheus", "uid": "${datasource}" },
"targets": [
{
"expr": "sum(rate(http_requests_total{job=\"$job\"}[5m])) by (status_code)",
"legendFormat": "{{status_code}}",
"refId": "A"
}
],
"fieldConfig": {
"defaults": {
"unit": "reqps",
"thresholds": {
"mode": "absolute",
"steps": [
{ "color": "green", "value": null },
{ "color": "yellow", "value": 1000 },
{ "color": "red", "value": 5000 }
]
}
},
"overrides": []
},
"options": {
"legend": { "calcs": ["mean", "max", "last"], "displayMode": "table", "placement": "bottom" },
"tooltip": { "mode": "multi", "sort": "desc" }
}
}
gridPos: The dashboard uses a 24-column grid. Common widths: full-width=24, half=12, third=8, quarter=6. Height in grid units (1 unit ≈ 30px).
# Rates
"reqps" -- requests per second
"ops" -- operations per second
"Bps" -- bytes per second
"percentunit" -- 0.0-1.0 as percentage
# Storage
"bytes" -- bytes (auto-scales to KB/MB/GB)
"decbytes" -- decimal bytes (1 KB = 1000 B)
# Time
"ms" -- milliseconds
"s" -- seconds
"dtdurationms" -- duration in ms (shows as "1h 2m 3s")
# Counts
"short" -- compact number (1.2k, 3.4M)
"none" -- raw number
Full list: Panel > Field > Unit dropdown in Grafana UI, or the units reference.
Variables make dashboards reusable across environments and services.
Query variable (populates from metric labels):
{
"name": "job",
"type": "query",
"datasource": { "type": "prometheus", "uid": "prometheus" },
"query": { "query": "label_values(up, job)", "refId": "A" },
"refresh": 2,
"includeAll": true,
"multi": true,
"label": "Service"
}
Constant variable:
{
"name": "cluster",
"type": "constant",
"query": "production",
"label": "Cluster"
}
Datasource variable (switch data sources without editing queries):
{
"name": "datasource",
"type": "datasource",
"pluginId": "prometheus",
"includeAll": false,
"label": "Prometheus"
}
Use variables in queries:
# Reference a variable in a PromQL query
rate(http_requests_total{job=~"$job"}[5m])
# Multi-value variable uses regex OR automatically
# When $job = ["api", "worker"], it becomes job=~"api|worker"
Chain variables (second variable filters based on first):
{
"name": "pod",
"query": "label_values(kube_pod_info{namespace=\"$namespace\"}, pod)"
}
Transformations run client-side after data is fetched, reshaping results without changing queries.
Common transformations:
"transformations": [
{
"id": "merge",
"options": {}
},
{
"id": "organize",
"options": {
"renameByName": { "Value #A": "Request Rate", "Value #B": "Error Rate" },
"excludeByName": { "Time": true }
}
},
{
"id": "calculateField",
"options": {
"alias": "Error %",
"mode": "reduceRow",
"reduce": { "reducer": "last" },
"binary": {
"left": "errors",
"right": "total",
"operator": "/"
}
}
},
{
"id": "filterByValue",
"options": {
"filters": [{ "fieldName": "Error %", "config": { "id": "greater", "options": { "value": 0.01 } } }],
"type": "include",
"match": "any"
}
}
]
Key transformation IDs: merge, organize, rename, calculateField, filterByValue,
groupBy, sortBy, limit, labelsToFields, seriesToRows, partitionByValues.
Panel link (click a panel to go somewhere):
"links": [
{
"title": "Go to details",
"url": "/d/details-dashboard?var-service=${__field.labels.service}",
"targetBlank": false
}
]
Dashboard link (top-right corner links):
"links": [
{
"title": "Runbook",
"url": "https://wiki.example.com/runbook/${job}",
"icon": "external link",
"targetBlank": true,
"type": "link"
}
]
Built-in variables for links:
${__value.raw} - current data point value${__field.labels.job} - label value from current series${__url.params} - current URL query parameters (pass-through)${__from} / ${__to} - current time range as Unix msShow events overlaid on time series panels (deployments, incidents, etc.).
Query annotation from Loki:
{
"datasource": { "type": "loki", "uid": "loki" },
"expr": "{job=\"deployments\"} |= \"deployed\"",
"name": "Deployments",
"iconColor": "blue",
"titleFormat": "{{service}} deployed",
"textFormat": "{{version}} by {{author}}"
}
Query annotation from Prometheus:
{
"datasource": { "type": "prometheus", "uid": "prometheus" },
"expr": "changes(kube_deployment_status_observed_generation{namespace=\"production\"}[5m]) > 0",
"step": "60s",
"name": "Deployments",
"iconColor": "blue",
"titleFormat": "Deploy: {{deployment}}"
}
# Create or update a dashboard
curl -s -X POST \
-H "Authorization: Bearer <API_KEY>" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
"https://myorg.grafana.net/api/dashboards/db" \
-d '{
"dashboard": { <dashboard JSON> },
"folderUid": "my-folder",
"overwrite": true,
"message": "Updated via API"
}'
# Get a dashboard by UID
curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer <API_KEY>" \
"https://myorg.grafana.net/api/dashboards/uid/my-dashboard-v1" | jq '.dashboard'
# Search dashboards
curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer <API_KEY>" \
"https://myorg.grafana.net/api/search?query=kubernetes&type=dash-db" | \
jq '.[] | {uid, title, folderTitle}'
# Create a folder
curl -s -X POST \
-H "Authorization: Bearer <API_KEY>" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
"https://myorg.grafana.net/api/folders" \
-d '{"uid": "platform-team", "title": "Platform Team"}'
For dashboards embedded in app plugins, use @grafana/scenes instead of raw JSON.
See the grafana-o11y:grafana-scenes skill for the React-based scenes API.