
About
Create and manage production-ready Grafana dashboards for comprehensive system observability.
name: grafana-dashboards description: "Create and manage production-ready Grafana dashboards for comprehensive system observability." risk: unknown source: community date_added: "2026-02-27"
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 assets/api-dashboard.json
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)",
"format": "heatmap"
}],
"dataFormat": "tsbuckets",
"yAxis": {
"format": "s"
}
}
Variables
Query Variables
{
"templating": {
"list": [
{
"name": "namespace",
"type": "query",
"datasource": "Prometheus",
"query": "label_values(kube_pod_info, namespace
Compatible Tools
Claude CodeCursor
Tags
DevOps

