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

• Dashboard JSON model
• HTTP API — dashboards
• Panel types
• Variables
• Transformations