Grafana Dashboards Skill

Overview

Provides 90%+ context savings vs raw Grafana API calls. Comprehensive dashboard, datasource, and alerting operations with progressive disclosure by feature category.

Requirements

• Grafana instance accessible via URL
• API key with appropriate permissions
• Environment variables configured

Environment Variables

• GRAFANA_URL (required): Base URL of Grafana instance (e.g., https://grafana.example.com)
• GRAFANA_API_KEY (required): API key for authentication
• GRAFANA_ORG_ID (optional): Organization ID (defaults to 1)

Tools (Progressive Disclosure)

Dashboard Operations

Folder Management

Data Sources

Alerting

Panels & Queries

Quick Reference

Dashboard Operations

# List all dashboards
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $GRAFANA_API_KEY" \
  "$GRAFANA_URL/api/search?type=dash-db"

# Get dashboard by UID
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $GRAFANA_API_KEY" \
  "$GRAFANA_URL/api/dashboards/uid/<dashboard-uid>"

# Search dashboards by tag
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $GRAFANA_API_KEY" \
  "$GRAFANA_URL/api/search?tag=production"

# Delete dashboard (DANGEROUS)
curl -X DELETE \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $GRAFANA_API_KEY" \
  "$GRAFANA_URL/api/dashboards/uid/<dashboard-uid>"

Data Source Operations

# List all datasources
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $GRAFANA_API_KEY" \
  "$GRAFANA_URL/api/datasources"

# Test datasource connection
curl -X POST \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $GRAFANA_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"datasource": {"uid": "<datasource-uid>"}}' \
  "$GRAFANA_URL/api/datasources/proxy/<datasource-id>/test"

Alert Operations

# List alert rules
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $GRAFANA_API_KEY" \
  "$GRAFANA_URL/api/v1/provisioning/alert-rules"

# Get alert state
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $GRAFANA_API_KEY" \
  "$GRAFANA_URL/api/v1/provisioning/alert-rules/<alert-uid>"

# Pause alert
curl -X POST \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $GRAFANA_API_KEY" \
  "$GRAFANA_URL/api/v1/provisioning/alert-rules/<alert-uid>/pause"

Panel Rendering

# Render panel as PNG
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $GRAFANA_API_KEY" \
  "$GRAFANA_URL/render/d-solo/<dashboard-uid>/<panel-name>?panelId=<panel-id>&width=1000&height=500" \
  -o panel.png

Configuration

API Key Permissions

Ensure your API key has appropriate permissions:

• Viewer: Read-only access to dashboards and datasources
• Editor: Create and modify dashboards
• Admin: Full access including datasource and alert management

Organization Context

If using multiple organizations, set GRAFANA_ORG_ID or include X-Grafana-Org-Id header:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $GRAFANA_API_KEY" \
  -H "X-Grafana-Org-Id: 2" \
  "$GRAFANA_URL/api/dashboards/home"

Security

⚠️ CRITICAL: Never expose API keys in logs or responses ⚠️ Dashboard deletion is DANGEROUS - requires extra confirmation ⚠️ Datasource credentials must be masked in all outputs ⚠️ Use viewer-level keys when read-only access is sufficient

Security Best Practices

1. Store API keys in environment variables, never hardcode
2. Use least-privilege API keys (viewer > editor > admin)
3. Mask sensitive datasource connection strings
4. Require confirmation for all destructive operations
5. Audit all dashboard modifications
6. Rotate API keys regularly

Agent Integration

• devops (primary): Dashboard provisioning, monitoring setup
• performance-engineer (primary): Performance metrics visualization
• incident-responder (secondary): Real-time incident dashboards
• analyst (secondary): Data analysis and reporting
• qa (secondary): Test metrics visualization

Common Workflows

Dashboard Provisioning

1. Export dashboard from Grafana UI or create JSON template
2. Use create-dashboard to provision to target instance
3. Verify with get-dashboard
4. Configure alerts with create-alert

Performance Monitoring

1. List existing datasources with list-datasources
2. Test datasource connectivity with test-datasource
3. Query metrics with query-datasource
4. Create performance dashboards with create-dashboard
5. Set up alerts with appropriate thresholds

Incident Response

1. Search for relevant dashboards with search-dashboards
2. Render critical panels with render-panel
3. Check alert states with alert-state
4. Query datasources for incident timeline

Troubleshooting

API Version Compatibility

• Supports Grafana v8.x, v9.x, v10.x, v11.x
• Alert API uses v1 provisioning endpoints
• Legacy alerting (pre-v8) not supported

Examples

Create Dashboard from Template

# Read dashboard template
DASHBOARD_JSON=$(cat dashboard-template.json)

# Create dashboard
curl -X POST \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $GRAFANA_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d "{\"dashboard\": $DASHBOARD_JSON, \"folderId\": 0, \"overwrite\": false}" \
  "$GRAFANA_URL/api/dashboards/db"

Search and Export Dashboards

# Search by tag
DASHBOARDS=$(curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $GRAFANA_API_KEY" \
  "$GRAFANA_URL/api/search?tag=kubernetes")

# Export each dashboard
for uid in $(echo $DASHBOARDS | jq -r '.[].uid'); do
  curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $GRAFANA_API_KEY" \
    "$GRAFANA_URL/api/dashboards/uid/$uid" > "dashboard-$uid.json"
done

Monitor Alert States

# Get all alerts
ALERTS=$(curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $GRAFANA_API_KEY" \
  "$GRAFANA_URL/api/v1/provisioning/alert-rules")

# Filter firing alerts
echo $ALERTS | jq '.[] | select(.state == "firing")'