Grafana Dashboards

Create and manage production-ready Grafana dashboards for comprehensive system observability.

Do not use this skill when

• The task is unrelated to grafana dashboards
• You need a different domain or tool outside this scope

Instructions

• Clarify goals, constraints, and required inputs.
• Apply relevant best practices and validate outcomes.
• Provide actionable steps and verification.
• If detailed examples are required, open resources/implementation-playbook.md.

Purpose

Design effective Grafana dashboards for monitoring applications, infrastructure, and business metrics.

Use this skill when

• Visualize Prometheus metrics
• Create custom dashboards
• Implement SLO dashboards
• Monitor infrastructure
• Track business KPIs

Dashboard Design Principles

1. Hierarchy of Information

┌─────────────────────────────────────┐
│  Critical Metrics (Big Numbers)     │
├─────────────────────────────────────┤
│  Key Trends (Time Series)           │
├─────────────────────────────────────┤
│  Detailed Metrics (Tables/Heatmaps) │
└─────────────────────────────────────┘

2. RED Method (Services)

• Rate - Requests per second
• Errors - Error rate
• Duration - Latency/response time

3. USE Method (Resources)

• Utilization - % time resource is busy
• Saturation - Queue length/wait time
• Errors - Error count

Dashboard Structure

API Monitoring Dashboard

{
  "dashboard": {
    "title": "API Monitoring",
    "tags": ["api", "production"],
    "timezone": "browser",
    "refresh": "30s",
    "panels": [
      {
        "title": "Request Rate",
        "type": "graph",
        "targets": [
          {
            "expr": "sum(rate(http_requests_total[5m])) by (service)",
            "legendFormat": "{{service}}"
          }
        ],
        "gridPos": {"x": 0, "y": 0, "w": 12, "h": 8}
      },
      {
        "title": "Error Rate %",
        "type": "graph",
        "targets": [
          {
            "expr": "(sum(rate(http_requests_total{status=~\"5..\"}[5m])) / sum(rate(http_requests_total[5m]))) * 100",
            "legendFormat": "Error Rate"
          }
        ],
        "alert": {
          "conditions": [
            {
              "evaluator": {"params": [5], "type": "gt"},
              "operator": {"type": "and"},
              "query": {"params": ["A", "5m", "now"]},
              "type": "query"
            }
          ]
        },
        "gridPos": {"x": 12, "y": 0, "w": 12, "h": 8}
      },
      {
        "title": "P95 Latency",
        "type": "graph",
        "targets": [
          {
            "expr": "histogram_quantile(0.95, sum(rate(http_request_duration_seconds_bucket[5m])) by (le, service))",
            "legendFormat": "{{service}}"
          }
        ],
        "gridPos": {"x": 0, "y": 8, "w": 24, "h": 8}
      }
    ]
  }
}

Reference: See inline example

Panel Types

1. Stat Panel (Single Value)

{
  "type": "stat",
  "title": "Total Requests",
  "targets": [{
    "expr": "sum(http_requests_total)"
  }],
  "options": {
    "reduceOptions": {
      "values": false,
      "calcs": ["lastNotNull"]
    },
    "orientation": "auto",
    "textMode": "auto",
    "colorMode": "value"
  },
  "fieldConfig": {
    "defaults": {
      "thresholds": {
        "mode": "absolute",
        "steps": [
          {"value": 0, "color": "green"},
          {"value": 80, "color": "yellow"},
          {"value": 90, "color": "red"}
        ]
      }
    }
  }
}

2. Time Series Graph

{
  "type": "graph",
  "title": "CPU Usage",
  "targets": [{
    "expr": "100 - (avg by (instance) (rate(node_cpu_seconds_total{mode=\"idle\"}[5m])) * 100)"
  }],
  "yaxes": [
    {"format": "percent", "max": 100, "min": 0},
    {"format": "short"}
  ]
}

3. Table Panel

{
  "type": "table",
  "title": "Service Status",
  "targets": [{
    "expr": "up",
    "format": "table",
    "instant": true
  }],
  "transformations": [
    {
      "id": "organize",
      "options": {
        "excludeByName": {"Time": true},
        "indexByName": {},
        "renameByName": {
          "instance": "Instance",
          "job": "Service",
          "Value": "Status"
        }
      }
    }
  ]
}

4. Heatmap

{
  "type": "heatmap",
  "title": "Latency Heatmap",
  "targets": [{
    "expr": "sum(rate(http_request_duration_seconds_bucket[5m])) by (le)",

…