Grafana

# Grafana Skill

> The open observability platform.

## Ecosystem Graph

```mermaid
graph LR
  grafana["Grafana"]
  grafana -- "integrates with" --> prometheus
  grafana -- "integrates with" --> loki
  grafana -- "alternative to" --> datadog
```

## Quick Start
Grafana connects to disparate data sources (Prometheus, Loki, Postgres) and visualizes them on highly customizable dashboards.

```bash
docker run -d -p 3000:3000 grafana/grafana
```

## Production Patterns
### Provisioning as Code
Do not click around the Grafana UI to create critical production dashboards. Use Grafana's File Provisioning system (JSON/YAML) or Infrastructure as Code (Terraform) to version control your dashboards and alerts.

## Architecture & Scaling
### Unified Alerting
Grafana handles alerting natively. Define alert rules directly on the dashboard panels. Ensure Grafana is connected to a Notification Channel like Slack, PagerDuty, or Discord to route critical anomalies immediately.

## Error Recovery
If Grafana loses connection to its underlying database (SQLite by default, but should be Postgres in production), the UI will hang. Ensure high availability by clustering Grafana nodes backed by a managed PostgreSQL database.

## Security Notes
Never expose Grafana to the public internet without enforcing SSO (Single Sign-On) via Google, GitHub, or Okta. Disable basic authentication (`admin/admin`) immediately upon provisioning.

## Relationships
**Alternatives**: [datadog](/skills/datadog)

**Works Well With**: [prometheus](/skills/prometheus), [loki](/skills/loki)

## References
- [Grafana Docs](https://grafana.com/docs/)

## Why use this skill
Use this when your agent works with **grafana** — structured patterns beat pasted docs and prevent common hallucinations.

## AI pitfalls
- Using outdated SDK or API versions from training data
- Inventing environment variable names
- Omitting error handling and retry logic

## Production checklist
- [ ] Secrets in environment variables, not source code
- [ ] Error handling and logging in place
- [ ] Rate limits and timeouts configured

## Related skills
- [`prometheus`](../prometheus/SKILL.md) — integrates with
- [`loki`](../loki/SKILL.md) — integrates with
- [`datadog`](../datadog/SKILL.md) — alternative to

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> **Last Verified:** 2026-07-02