Dashboarding

Grafana LabsOfficialPublished by Grafana Labs

Skill
Tool integration
Cloud and DevOps
Apache-2.0
No issues found

From the author

Build, modify, and ship Grafana dashboards as JSON via the HTTP API — panel types (timeseries / stat / gauge / table / heatmap / logs / traces / node-graph), `gridPos` 24-column layout, units, thresholds, template + datasource + chained variables, transformations (`organize` / `calculateField` / `filterByValue`), panel + dashboard links with `${__field.labels.x}` / `${__from}`, and Loki/Prometheus annotations. Use when scripting dashboard creation, writing the dashboard JSON for a new service, adding a `$job` dropdown variable, computing an "Error %" column with a transformation, overlaying deploys as annotations, or pushing a dashboard via `POST /api/dashboards/db` — even when the user says "create a dashboard for this metric", "add a service dropdown", "show errors as percentage", "overlay our deploys", or "export the dashboard JSON" without naming the API or schema. After every API push, verify with the returned `version` plus a GET on the dashboard UID.

— the description by Grafana Labs

AutoGineer summary

Written by AutoGineer from the skill’s own files, not by the author

This skill provides a structured approach to managing Grafana dashboards as code. By interacting with the Grafana HTTP API, users can automate the creation, modification, and deployment of dashboards. It covers the full lifecycle of dashboard management, including defining panel layouts, configuring data sources, setting up template variables, and applying data transformations. The skill emphasizes a workflow where dashboard configurations are maintained as JSON, pushed to the server, and verified through API responses to ensure consistency and correctness.

What it does

Automates dashboard creation and updates via the HTTP API
Defines dashboard layouts using a 24-column grid system
Configures panel types including timeseries, stat, gauge, and logs
Implements template variables for dynamic dashboard filtering
Applies data transformations like calculations and filtering
Validates dashboard state by verifying API responses and performing read-back checks

When to use it

When you need to script the deployment of dashboards for new services
When managing dashboard versions as code in a repository
When you need to apply consistent template variables or annotations across multiple dashboards
When performing complex data transformations that are easier to define in JSON
When you want to automate the synchronization of dashboards between environments

Advantages

Enables version control for dashboard configurations
Ensures consistency across multiple dashboards through programmatic definitions
Reduces manual effort in the Grafana UI for repetitive tasks
Provides a clear path for verifying dashboard deployment success

Usage examples

“Create a dashboard for this metric”: The agent generates a JSON payload with the specified panel type and data source, then pushes it to the Grafana API.
“Add a service dropdown to my dashboard”: The agent fetches the existing dashboard JSON, appends a query-based template variable for the service, and updates the dashboard via the API.
“Show errors as a percentage”: The agent modifies the panel configuration to include a calculateField transformation that computes the error percentage.
“Export the dashboard JSON”: The agent retrieves the current dashboard configuration from the API and provides the raw JSON structure.

Install

Download the skill as a ZIP:
https://mp-staging.autogineer.com/agent-skills/grafana/dashboarding/download

Unzip it into the cross-client skills folder of your project:

mkdir -p .agents/skills && unzip dashboarding.zip -d .agents/skills

Documentation by Grafana Labs

Grafana Dashboard Authoring

Docs: https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/dashboards/

Dashboards are JSON. Author once, push via API, share by uid.

Prerequisites

Grafana stack (OSS, Enterprise, or Cloud) reachable from your machine
API token with dashboards:write (Authorization: Bearer <token>)
jq for inspecting responses
The JSON-schema cheat sheet in references/json-schema.md

Common Workflows

1. Push a new dashboard via the API + verify

# 1. Build the payload — wrap the dashboard JSON, set folder, mark overwrite
cat > /tmp/dash.json <<'JSON'
{
  "dashboard": {
    "uid": "demo-svc-v1",
    "title": "Demo Service",
    "schemaVersion": 41,
    "tags": ["demo"],
    "time": { "from": "now-1h", "to": "now" },
    "templating": { "list": [] },
    "panels": [{
      "id": 1, "type": "timeseries", "title": "Request Rate",
      "gridPos": { "x": 0, "y": 0, "w": 24, "h": 8 },
      "datasource": { "type": "prometheus", "uid": "prometheus" },
      "targets": [{
        "expr": "sum(rate(http_requests_total[5m])) by (status_code)",
        "legendFormat": "{{status_code}}", "refId": "A"
      }],
      "fieldConfig": { "defaults": { "unit": "reqps" }, "overrides": [] }
    }]
  },
  "folderUid": "",
  "overwrite": true,
  "message": "initial push"
}
JSON

# 2. Validate the JSON BEFORE you send it (catches trailing-comma typos)
jq empty /tmp/dash.json && echo "json ok"

# 3. POST
RESP=$(curl -s -X POST -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  "$GRAFANA/api/dashboards/db" -d @/tmp/dash.json)
echo "$RESP" | jq '{status, uid, url, version}'
# Expect: status="success", url="/d/demo-svc-v1/...", version=1 (incremented on each push)

# 4. Verify the round-trip — read it back and confirm one panel + the expected title
curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  "$GRAFANA/api/dashboards/uid/demo-svc-v1" \
  | jq '{title: .dashboard.title, panels: (.dashboard.panels | length)}'
# Expect: {"title":"Demo Service","panels":1}

# 5. Open the dashboard in a browser — confirm the panel renders with data.

2. Add a `$job` template variable to an existing dashboard

# 1. Fetch existing dashboard
curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  "$GRAFANA/api/dashboards/uid/demo-svc-v1" > /tmp/dash.json

# 2. Edit templating.list — append:
#   { "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" }
#  (Use jq, an editor, or the Grafana UI — schema in references/json-schema.md.)

# 3. Update the panel expr to use the variable: rate(http_requests_total{job=~"$job"}[5m])

# 4. POST it back with overwrite: true. Verify the variable appears in the UI dropdown.

3. Compute an "Error %" column with a transformation

{
  "id": "calculateField",
  "options": {
    "alias": "Error %", "mode": "reduceRow",
    "reduce": { "reducer": "last" },
    "binary": { "left": "errors", "right": "total", "operator": "/" }
  }
}

Add this to the panel's transformations: []. Verify in the UI panel inspector — the new field should appear and update with the variable selection.

Full schema (panels, units, all transformations, annotations, links): references/json-schema.md.

API reference

# Get
curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  "$GRAFANA/api/dashboards/uid/<uid>" | jq '.dashboard'

# Search
curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  "$GRAFANA/api/search?query=kubernetes&type=dash-db" | jq '.[] | {uid,title,folderTitle}'

# Create folder
curl -s -X POST -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" "$GRAFANA/api/folders" \
  -d '{"uid":"platform-team","title":"Platform Team"}'

For dashboards embedded in app plugins, use @grafana/scenes (skill grafana-o11y:grafana-scenes).

Resources

Files

ATTRIBUTION.mdAdded by AutoGineer844 B
LICENSELicence file added by AutoGineer11.1 KiB
SKILL.md5.4 KiB
references/json-schema.md4.5 KiB

references/json-schema.md

Dashboard + panel JSON schema

Dashboard root

{
  "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": []
}

uid — stable identifier; keep short
schemaVersion — 41 for Grafana 11+
time.from / to — relative (now-1h) or absolute ISO
refresh — "30s", "1m", "5m", "" (off)

Panel

{
  "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: 24-column grid. Widths: full=24, half=12, third=8, quarter=6. Height 1 unit ≈ 30 px.

Panel types

Panel	Use case
Time series	Any metric over time
Stat	Single value + sparkline
Gauge	% or value against min/max
Bar gauge	Side-by-side comparison
Table	Multi-column data
Heatmap	Distribution over time
Logs	Loki log streams
Traces	Tempo trace search
Text	Markdown docs
Candlestick	OHLC / min-max-avg
Node graph	Service dependency graph

Useful units

reqps        requests/sec
ops          ops/sec
Bps          bytes/sec
percentunit  0.0-1.0 as %
bytes        bytes (auto-scales)
decbytes     decimal bytes (1 KB = 1000 B)
ms / s       milliseconds / seconds
dtdurationms 1h 2m 3s
short        compact (1.2k, 3.4M)
none         raw number

Template variables

{ "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" }

{ "name":"cluster", "type":"constant", "query":"production", "label":"Cluster" }

{ "name":"datasource", "type":"datasource", "pluginId":"prometheus",
  "includeAll":false, "label":"Prometheus" }

Multi-value variables expand to a regex OR: $job=["api","worker"] → job=~"api|worker". Chained: label_values(kube_pod_info{namespace=\"$namespace\"}, pod).

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"
  }}
]

Common IDs: merge, organize, rename, calculateField, filterByValue, groupBy, sortBy, limit, labelsToFields, seriesToRows, partitionByValues.

Links & annotations

"links": [
  { "title":"Go to details", "url":"/d/details?var-service=${__field.labels.service}", "targetBlank":false },
  { "title":"Runbook",        "url":"https://wiki.example.com/runbook/${job}", "icon":"external link",
    "targetBlank":true, "type":"link" }
]

Built-in vars: ${__value.raw}, ${__field.labels.job}, ${__url.params}, ${__from} / ${__to} (Unix ms).

Loki annotation:

{ "datasource":{"type":"loki","uid":"loki"},
  "expr":"{job=\"deployments\"} |= \"deployed\"",
  "name":"Deployments", "iconColor":"blue",
  "titleFormat":"{{service}} deployed", "textFormat":"{{version}} by {{author}}" }

Prometheus annotation:

{ "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}}" }

Requirements and compatibility

Works with: Claude Code, Claude apps, OpenAI Codex, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Kiro, OpenCode, Goose, Amp, Roo Code, JetBrains Junie, Factory Droid, Devin (ex-Windsurf), Mistral Vibe, OpenHands, Letta

“Works with” means the tool reads the open Agent Skills format; a skill written for one tool may use features others lack.

Security

No issues found by our static scan· No issues found

A static scan is not a guarantee. Skills are third-party content: review a skill before you let an agent use it.

Attribution and licence

Published by

Grafana Labs

Publisher

Grafana Labs (Official)

Source

grafana/skills · skills/grafana-core/dashboarding · commit 8fb72a5

Licence

Apache License 2.0 (redistribution allowed)

LICENSE (added by AutoGineer from LICENSE)
ATTRIBUTION.md (written by AutoGineer)

Synced

2026-11-08

AutoGineer is not affiliated with or endorsed by Grafana Labs.

Download ZIP

The ZIP holds the skill’s files, its licence files and an ATTRIBUTION.md. Download dashboarding.zip