What you can do with Grafana

Built for

SRE, DevOps, platform engineering, incident response, observability teams

Example workflows

Find service dashboards

Uses dashboard search to orient incident response.

Try this

Search Grafana dashboards for this service, list matching dashboards and folders, then summarize which dashboard looks most useful for triage.

Review alert status

Connects alert data to operational triage.

Try this

List Grafana alert rules, identify firing or recently changed alerts, and summarize which services need attention.

Map observability sources

Helps agents understand the observability backend landscape.

Try this

List Grafana data sources and explain what metrics, logs, or traces backends are connected for this organization.

Mark an incident

Uses annotations to connect operational events to dashboards.

Try this

Create a Grafana annotation for this deployment window with incident tags and a short description for later dashboard review.

Context to know first

What Grafana workflows can MCPBundles support?

It can inspect instance health, organizations, dashboards, folders, data sources, alert rules, and annotations available to the connected service account.

Does this work with Grafana Cloud and self-hosted Grafana?

Yes. Grafana Cloud uses a public stack URL. Self-hosted localhost instances can be reached through the MCPBundles desktop proxy.

What identifiers matter in Grafana?

Dashboards are best addressed by UID rather than numeric ID because UIDs are stable across many dashboard operations.

Related editorial

Grafana Workflows with AI

How AI agents can search dashboards, query datasources, debug alerts, and annotate incidents during an investigation.

Read article

AI Skill
SKILL.md

Domain knowledge for Grafana — workflow patterns, data models, and gotchas for your AI agent.

Grafana

Open-source observability platform for metrics, logs, and traces. Connects to data sources like Prometheus, Loki, InfluxDB, Elasticsearch, CloudWatch, and many more.

Data Model

  • Dashboards — collections of panels that visualize data. Identified by UID. Organized into folders.
  • Panels — individual visualizations within a dashboard (graphs, gauges, tables, etc.).
  • Data sources — backend connections to metrics/logs/traces stores (Prometheus, Loki, Postgres, etc.).
  • Folders — organizational containers for dashboards. Support nested hierarchy.
  • Alerts — rules that evaluate queries and fire notifications when thresholds are breached.
  • Annotations — event markers on dashboards with timestamps, tags, and descriptions.
  • Organizations — top-level tenant boundary. Most API calls are org-scoped.

Key Workflows

  1. Search dashboards to find what's already built for a service or metric.
  2. Get a dashboard by UID to see its panels, queries, and structure.
  3. List data sources to understand what backends are connected.
  4. Query alerts to see what's firing or recently resolved.
  5. Create annotations to mark deployments, incidents, or notable events on dashboards.

Gotchas

  • Service Account Tokens: Required for API access. Created in Administration → Service Accounts. Scoped to the service account's role (Viewer, Editor, Admin).
  • Cloud vs self-hosted: Cloud instances live at https://<stack>.grafana.net. Self-hosted instances are typically on localhost:3000 via the desktop proxy.
  • Dashboard UIDs: Dashboards are identified by UID (stable) not ID (numeric, can change). Always use UID-based endpoints.
  • Search pagination: Default limit is 1000. Use page parameter for large orgs.
  • Unified Alerting: Grafana 9+ uses unified alerting (/api/v1/provisioning/alert-rules). Legacy alerts are at /api/alerts.

Tools in this Server (39)

Grafana Create Annotation

Create an annotation in Grafana to mark events like deployments, incidents, or configuration changes. Annotations appear as vertical markers on dashbo...

Grafana Create Incident

Create a new incident in Grafana Incident.

Grafana Delete Alert Rule

Delete a Grafana alert rule by UID.

Grafana Get Alert Instances

Get the current state of all alert instances. Shows which alerts are firing, pending, or normal.

Grafana Get Alert Rule

Get detailed information about a single Grafana alert rule by UID.

Grafana Get Dashboard

Get a Grafana dashboard by UID. Returns the full dashboard model including panels, queries, variables, annotations, and layout.

Grafana Get Dashboard Panels

Get the title, query expressions, and datasource info for every panel in a dashboard. Useful for understanding what a dashboard monitors without loadi...

Grafana Get Dashboard Summary

Get a compact overview of a dashboard — title, panel count, panel types, variables, and metadata — without the full JSON. Minimizes context usage.

Grafana Get Datasource

Get detailed information about a Grafana data source by UID. Includes type, connection URL, database, access mode, and JSON configuration.

Grafana Get Health

Check the health and version of the connected Grafana instance.

Grafana Get Incident

Get detailed information about a specific Grafana incident by ID.

Grafana Get Loki Label Values

Get all values for a specific Loki label name.

Grafana Get Notification Policy

Get the notification policy routing tree that controls how alerts are routed to contact points.

Grafana Get Oncall Shift

Get detailed information about a specific on-call shift.

Grafana Get Org

Get details about the current Grafana organization — name, ID, and address.

Grafana Get Prom Label Values

Get all values for a specific Prometheus label name.

Grafana Get Prom Metadata

Get metric metadata (type, help text, unit) from a Prometheus datasource. Useful for understanding what a metric measures before querying it.

Grafana List Alert Rules

List all alert rules in Grafana unified alerting. Shows rule name, condition, folder, status, and evaluation interval.

Grafana List Annotations

List annotations from Grafana. Annotations are event markers on dashboards used to mark deployments, incidents, or notable events. Filter by dashboard...

Grafana List Annotation Tags

List available annotation tags with their usage counts.

Grafana List Contact Points

List all notification contact points configured in Grafana alerting.

Grafana List Datasources

List all data sources in the Grafana instance. Shows type (Prometheus, Loki, Postgres, etc.), name, URL, and access mode.

Grafana List Folders

List all folders in Grafana. Folders organize dashboards into logical groups.

Grafana List Incidents

List incidents from Grafana Incident. Filter by status (active/resolved).

Grafana List Loki Labels

List available label names from a Loki datasource.

Grafana List Oncall Alerts

List alert groups from Grafana OnCall. Filter by status.

Grafana List Oncall Schedules

List all on-call schedules from Grafana OnCall.

Grafana List Oncall Teams

List all teams in Grafana OnCall.

Grafana List Oncall Users

List all users registered in Grafana OnCall.

Grafana List Prometheus Labels

List available label names from a Prometheus datasource.

Grafana List Prometheus Metrics

List available metric names from a Prometheus datasource. Optionally filter by a series selector.

Grafana List Teams

List all teams configured in the Grafana organization.

Grafana List Users

List all users in the current Grafana organization.

Grafana Query Loki

Execute LogQL queries against a Loki datasource through Grafana. Supports log queries (returns log lines) and metric queries (returns time series). Us...

Grafana Query Prometheus

Execute PromQL queries against a Prometheus datasource through Grafana. Supports instant queries (current value) and range queries (time series). Use ...

Grafana Search Dashboards

Search dashboards and folders in Grafana. Filter by query string, tag, type, or starred status. Returns dashboard UIDs, titles, URLs, and tags.

Grafana Update Annotation

Update specific fields of an existing Grafana annotation (partial update).

Grafana Upsert Alert Rule

Create a new alert rule or update an existing one. Include 'uid' in the rule object for updates.

Grafana Upsert Dashboard

Create a new dashboard or update an existing one. Include 'uid' and 'version' in the dashboard JSON for updates. Omit 'uid' or set 'id' to null for ne...

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Grafana MCP server?

Grafana MCP server for observability and monitoring. Search dashboards, explore datasources, query alerts, manage annotations, and monitor your infrastructure — works with Grafana Cloud or self-hosted instances via the desktop proxy. It provides 39 tools that AI agents can use through the Model Context Protocol (MCP).

How do I connect Grafana to my AI agent?

Add the MCPBundles server URL to your MCP client configuration (Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code, etc.). The URL format is: https://mcp.mcpbundles.com/bundle/grafana. Authentication is handled automatically.

How many tools does Grafana provide?

Grafana provides 39 tools that can be called by AI agents, along with a SKILL.md that gives your AI agent domain knowledge about when and how to use them.

What authentication does Grafana require?

Grafana uses API Key. Grafana requires credentials. Connect via MCPBundles and authentication is handled automatically.

What Grafana workflows can MCPBundles support?

It can inspect instance health, organizations, dashboards, folders, data sources, alert rules, and annotations available to the connected service account.

Does this work with Grafana Cloud and self-hosted Grafana?

Yes. Grafana Cloud uses a public stack URL. Self-hosted localhost instances can be reached through the MCPBundles desktop proxy.

What identifiers matter in Grafana?

Dashboards are best addressed by UID rather than numeric ID because UIDs are stable across many dashboard operations.

What are the best Grafana AI workflows?

The strongest workflows are incident triage, dashboard discovery, alert summaries, data-source mapping, and deployment annotations.

Setup Instructions

Connect Grafana to any MCP client in minutes

https://mcp.mcpbundles.com/bundle/grafana

One-click install:

The link prefills the Add custom connector dialog — you still review the values and click Add, then Connect to complete OAuth.

Or add manually

  1. Open claude.ai → Settings → Connectors.
  2. Click the + button and choose Add custom connector.
  3. Set Name to Grafana and paste the MCP URL into Remote MCP server URL.
  4. Click Add. Grafana will appear under Not connected — select it and click Connect to complete OAuth.
Name: Grafana
Remote MCP server URL: https://mcp.mcpbundles.com/bundle/grafana
Authentication: OAuth

Custom connectors at claude.ai require a paid Claude plan (Pro, Max, Team, or Enterprise).

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Grafana MCP Server & Skill — 39 Tools