---
name: grafana-dashboards-6176ec6f5c9b
description: Create and manage production Grafana dashboards for real-time visualization of system and application metrics. Use when building monitoring dashboards, visualizing metrics, or creating operational observability interfaces.
---

# 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.

## 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

```json
{
  "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}
      }
    ]
  }
}
```


## Panel Types

### 1. Stat Panel (Single Value)
```json
{
  "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
```json
{
  "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
```json
{
  "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
```json
{
  "type": "heatmap",
  "title": "Latency Heatmap",
  "targets": [{
    "expr": "sum(rate(http_request_duration_seconds_bucket[5m])) by (le)",
    "format": "heatmap"
  }],
  "dataFormat": "tsbuckets",
  "yAxis": {
    "format": "s"
  }
}
```

## Variables

### Query Variables
```json
{
  "templating": {
    "list": [
      {
        "name": "namespace",
        "type": "query",
        "datasource": "Prometheus",
        "query": "label_values(kube_pod_info, namespace)",
        "refresh": 1,
        "multi": false
      },
      {
        "name": "service",
        "type": "query",
        "datasource": "Prometheus",
        "query": "label_values(kube_service_info{namespace=\"$namespace\"}, service)",
        "refresh": 1,
        "multi": true
      }
    ]
  }
}
```

### Use Variables in Queries
```
sum(rate(http_requests_total{namespace="$namespace", service=~"$service"}[5m]))
```

## Alerts in Dashboards

```json
{
  "alert": {
    "name": "High Error Rate",
    "conditions": [
      {
        "evaluator": {
          "params": [5],
          "type": "gt"
        },
        "operator": {"type": "and"},
        "query": {
          "params": ["A", "5m", "now"]
        },
        "reducer": {"type": "avg"},
        "type": "query"
      }
    ],
    "executionErrorState": "alerting",
    "for": "5m",
    "frequency": "1m",
    "message": "Error rate is above 5%",
    "noDataState": "no_data",
    "notifications": [
      {"uid": "slack-channel"}
    ]
  }
}
```

## Dashboard Provisioning

**dashboards.yml:**
```yaml
apiVersion: 1

providers:
  - name: 'default'
    orgId: 1
    folder: 'General'
    type: file
    disableDeletion: false
    updateIntervalSeconds: 10
    allowUiUpdates: true
    options:
      path: /etc/grafana/dashboards
```

## Common Dashboard Patterns

### Infrastructure Dashboard

**Key Panels:**
- CPU utilization per node
- Memory usage per node
- Disk I/O
- Network traffic
- Pod count by namespace
- Node status


### Database Dashboard

**Key Panels:**
- Queries per second
- Connection pool usage
- Query latency (P50, P95, P99)
- Active connections
- Database size
- Replication lag
- Slow queries


### Application Dashboard

**Key Panels:**
- Request rate
- Error rate
- Response time (percentiles)
- Active users/sessions
- Cache hit rate
- Queue length

## Best Practices

1. **Start with templates** (Grafana community dashboards)
2. **Use consistent naming** for panels and variables
3. **Group related metrics** in rows
4. **Set appropriate time ranges** (default: Last 6 hours)
5. **Use variables** for flexibility
6. **Add panel descriptions** for context
7. **Configure units** correctly
8. **Set meaningful thresholds** for colors
9. **Use consistent colors** across dashboards
10. **Test with different time ranges**

## Dashboard as Code

### Terraform Provisioning

```hcl
resource "grafana_dashboard" "api_monitoring" {
  config_json = file("${path.module}/dashboards/api-monitoring.json")
  folder      = grafana_folder.monitoring.id
}

resource "grafana_folder" "monitoring" {
  title = "Production Monitoring"
}
```

### Ansible Provisioning

```yaml
- name: Deploy Grafana dashboards
  copy:
    src: "{{ item }}"
    dest: /etc/grafana/dashboards/
  with_fileglob:
    - "dashboards/*.json"
  notify: restart grafana
```

## Related Skills

- `prometheus-configuration` - For metric collection
- `slo-implementation` - For SLO dashboards


---
Source attribution: rmyndharis
Original project: https://github.com/rmyndharis/antigravity-skills/blob/364ea63c190fcf7cac035f7fa91f0406fa392584/skills/grafana-dashboards/SKILL.md
License: MIT
License information: https://opensource.org/license/mit
Original upstream instructions; downloaded from Mega AI Hub.

## Upstream license notice

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2026 Yudhi Armyndharis

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.



# Mega AI Hub resource metadata

Creator / publisher: rmyndharis
Original project: https://github.com/rmyndharis/antigravity-skills/blob/364ea63c190fcf7cac035f7fa91f0406fa392584/skills/grafana-dashboards/SKILL.md
Attribution basis: Source repository record

Fields of work: Data & Analytics, Marketing, Operations, Product Management
Roles: Data Analyst, Growth Marketer, Operations Manager, Product Manager, Technical Product Manager
Specialties: API, Database, Design, DevOps, Frontend, Testing
Tools: Grafana
Country applicability: Country not specified
Classification basis: Source catalog labels
Instruction SHA-256: 19638ce0a5591e423c021f7d985d08cffac0660c4b2da6a09fb1cbc4d14299f6
