Grafana — in your terminal and your agentic coding environment. gcx works with Grafana Cloud, Enterprise, and OSS (Grafana 12+). See the compatibility matrix for details.
Query production. Investigate alerts. Let the Assistant root-cause issues. Ship fixes with observability built in. Without leaving your editor.
"Don't guess. Check the actual production data."
gcx is a CLI for Grafana — Cloud, Enterprise, and OSS alike. It gives you and your AI coding agent structured access to your Grafana instance: dashboards, alerts, SLOs, metrics, logs, traces, and more. Core features (resources, alerting, signal queries) work on any Grafana 12+; Grafana Cloud adds product-specific commands on top.
gcx works with any agentic coding tool. It ships with a suite of agent skills for common workflows like alert investigation, dashboard creation and GitOps, SLO management, and observability setup - ready to use out of the box.
# For Grafana Cloud instances
gcx login prod --server https://<your-cloud-instance>.grafana.net # select oauth, then press Enter to skip cloud token selection
# For self-hosted Grafana instances
gcx login local --server http://localhost:3000 --token <token>
# check how busy your API routes are (works on any Grafana)
gcx metrics query 'sum by (handler)(rate(grafana_http_request_duration_seconds_count[5m]))' --since 1h
# check your grafana cloud metrics usage in the last day (Grafana Cloud only)
gcx metrics query -d grafanacloud-usage 'grafanacloud_org_metrics_billable_series' --since 24h --step 1h
# list and search your dashboards
gcx dashboards list
gcx dashboards search "node exporter"Quick install (Linux/macOS):
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/grafana/gcx/main/scripts/install.sh | shDownloads the latest release, verifies the SHA-256 checksum, and installs to
~/.local/bin. Override the location with INSTALL_DIR:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/grafana/gcx/main/scripts/install.sh | INSTALL_DIR=/usr/local/bin shHomebrew (macOS and Linux):
brew install grafana/grafana/gcxCompiles from source on your machine (requires Homebrew's go, installed
automatically as a build dependency). First install takes ~30–60 seconds
while Go fetches dependencies; subsequent upgrades are faster.
To update to the latest version:
brew update && brew upgrade gcxPre-built binary (Linux/macOS/Windows):
Download the latest archive for your OS and architecture from the releases page, extract it, and move the binary to your PATH:
tar xzf gcx_*.tar.gz
chmod +x gcx && sudo mv gcx /usr/local/bin/On macOS, the manually-downloaded binary may be blocked on first run with
"Apple could not verify…" or killed: 9 — see
macOS Gatekeeper and killed: 9
for the one-time workaround. The curl | sh installer above handles this
automatically.
Go install:
go install github.com/grafana/gcx/cmd/gcx@latestShell completion:
gcx completion zsh > "${fpath[1]}/_gcx" # zsh
gcx completion bash > /etc/bash_completion.d/gcx # bash
gcx completion fish > ~/.config/fish/completions/gcx.fish # fishVerify: gcx --version
gcx login creates or re-authenticates a context. It auto-detects whether the server is Grafana Cloud (*.grafana.net) or on-premises and adjusts the prompt accordingly. Pick the path below that matches your setup.
Grafana Cloud, browser-based OAuth (interactive, recommended):
gcx login my-stack --server https://my-stack.grafana.netOpens a browser for OAuth, then saves the access token, refresh token, and proxy endpoint to the my-stack context's named stack entry and makes the context current. Best for day-to-day use on Cloud stacks. If OAuth doesn't suit your setup, pick "Service account token" at the prompt.
Service account token (Cloud or on-premises, recommended for CI/automation):
gcx login my-grafana --server https://your-instance.grafana.net --token glsa_xxx --yesUse a Grafana service account token with a role matching what the token needs to do: Viewer is enough for querying (metrics, logs, traces, profiles) and reading dashboards or folders; Editor covers pushing and editing dashboards and folders; managing datasource configuration needs Admin. On Grafana Cloud and Enterprise, RBAC custom roles can scope query access tighter (for example datasources:read plus datasources:query on specific datasources). Tokens work for both Cloud and on-premises and are recommended for automation. On-premises stacks can also use basic authentication or configured mTLS client certificates.
Grafana Cloud product APIs (SLO, Synthetic Monitoring, IRM, etc.):
Cloud product commands need a separate Grafana Cloud platform credential in addition to Grafana instance auth. A Cloud Access Policy token has the widest command compatibility and is recommended for automation. Provide one at login:
gcx login my-stack --server https://my-stack.grafana.net --token glsa_xxx --cloud-token glc_xxx --yesOr add Cloud access later by re-running gcx login against the same context.
The interactive Cloud step can keep the existing CAP or unexpired OAuth
credential, accept a new CAP, run the experimental browser-based Cloud OAuth
flow, or skip Cloud functionality:
gcx login --context my-stackYou can also run the Cloud OAuth flow directly:
gcx cloud login --context my-stackDirect Cloud OAuth stores the OAuth token, expiry, granted scopes, and endpoint pair, but it is experimental and not every Cloud product command supports it yet. Use a CAP for full compatibility.
gcx derives the Cloud stack slug from --server when possible. Set it explicitly only for custom domains where gcx cannot derive it:
gcx config set stacks.my-stack.slug your-stack-slugYou do not need to set Cloud endpoints for grafana.com; gcx defaults to
https://grafana.com. For a custom environment, authenticate and store a
coherent OAuth/API destination pair: supplying one endpoint to a login command
uses it for both operations unless you explicitly supply both to
gcx cloud login. Changing a named entry's api-url or oauth-url invalidates
its old credential, so re-authenticate after the edit.
Environment variables (CI/CD, agents):
export GRAFANA_SERVER="https://your-instance.grafana.net"
export GRAFANA_TOKEN="your-service-account-token"
export GRAFANA_CLOUD_TOKEN="your-cloud-access-policy-token"
# Optional: only needed if gcx cannot derive the stack slug from GRAFANA_SERVER.
export GRAFANA_CLOUD_STACK="your-stack-slug"Env vars resolve at every command invocation, so you can run gcx commands directly without a prior gcx login.
For safety, an auto-discovered repository .gcx.yaml cannot attach runtime
tokens, prompted login credentials, or external mTLS keypairs to destinations
the file supplies. If you intend that file to own credentials or direct
provider endpoints, authorize it explicitly with --config .gcx.yaml or
GCX_CONFIG=.gcx.yaml; a --server or endpoint flag alone is not sufficient.
Provider-specific runtime endpoints are accepted only when their matching
runtime credential is supplied in the same invocation; that pair does not
authorize an auto-discovered repository stack's TLS or proxy configuration.
Verify: gcx config check
See the login reference for the full guide, including re-authentication, environment-variable setup, and troubleshooting for common errors.
Query production from your terminal:
$ gcx metrics query 'sum by (instance)(rate(grafana_http_request_duration_seconds_count[5m]))' --since 1h
┌───────────────────────────────────────────┬───────────────────────────────────────────┬───────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ INSTANCE │ TIMESTAMP │ VALUE │
├───────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ localhost:3000 │ 2026-04-28T11:59:00+01:00 │ 0.0073020555555555556 │
│ localhost:3000 │ 2026-04-28T12:00:00+01:00 │ 0.11167158333333332 │
│ localhost:3000 │ 2026-04-28T12:01:00+01:00 │ 0.1024372962962963 │
│ localhost:3000 │ 2026-04-28T12:02:00+01:00 │ 0.09583333333333333 │
...Check what's firing:
$ gcx alert rules list --state firing
┌──────────────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┬──────────┬──────────┬──────────┐
│ UID │ NAME │ STATE │ HEALTH │ PAUSED │
├──────────────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼──────────┼──────────┼──────────┤
│ e62566b8-da2d-45e0-853a-40abebc9f863 │ adaptive_traces_forecast_gme_distributor_alert │ firing │ ok │ no │
│ cfhcfnhd8xam9a │ GraphiteProxy: Reads (dev) Native - Error Budget Burn Rate is High │ firing │ ok │ no │
│ affq1sffre0apd │ Unified Storage: HIGH_SLOW Latency - Error Budget Burn Rate is High │ firing │ ok │ no │
│ 16ddf4b0-7d8c-5dad-a71a-81f87a1e47a2 │ BillingSeriesAbsent │ firing │ ok │ no │
│ 09d44d08-b4cc-5d0e-8544-514e380f6bb3 │ k6CloudSecretsUsageReportingNoData │ firing │ ok │ no │
│ eb62d01f-5f73-543b-947b-2c849890d5f6 │ MissingBackups │ firing │ ok │ no │
│ 5f9e01d4-0b2d-5b51-a787-26535ded4719 │ MissingBackups │ firing │ ok │ no │
│ e4646576-9c07-5dfd-b22c-1e5b4da761ef │ MissingBackups │ firing │ ok │ no │
│ b89d5170-d0bd-5869-ad22-7a0a944b3aae │ MissingBackups │ firing │ ok │ no │Review SLO status:
$ gcx slo definitions list
┌───────────────────────┬───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┬─────────────┬────────────┬────────────┐
│ UUID │ NAME │ TARGET │ WINDOW │ STATUS │
├───────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼─────────────┼────────────┼────────────┤
│ y5yc8cy86yqtmey930foh │ CB additional identifier │ 90.00% │ 28d │ created │
│ sgz23sbv2c19v0r32s8y1 │ Checkout App - p95 Latency │ 99.50% │ 28d │ updated │
│ nwd4dk7j38spanror727k │ GraphiteProxy: Reads (dev) Native │ 99.50% │ 28d │ created │
│ e1cteeyl2ukmilw1tqugw │ KG fusion test grafana-slo-app │ 99.50% │ 28d │ created │
│ bwyf5d8g1614ugri7u0w7 │ KG fusion test grafana-slo-stats-service │ 99.50% │ 28d │ created │
│ tfkp5e0ronnl1ywpbv9b5 │ OTLPGateway: MetricWrites (dev) - Mimir │ 99.90% │ 28d │ created │
│ wvgxovr2k60efxizv1y9f │ Unified Storage: HIGH_SLOW Latency │ 99.50% │ 28d │ updated │
└───────────────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┴─────────────┴────────────┴────────────┘Visualize metrics directly in your terminal:
$ gcx metrics query 'sum by (handler)(rate(grafana_http_request_duration_seconds_count{}[5m]))' --since 1h -o graph
Explore more
# Grafana resources
gcx resources list-types # discover available resource types
gcx dashboards list # list all dashboards
gcx dashboards search "node exporter" # full-text search by title/tag/folder
gcx resources get folders # list all folders
gcx alert rules list # list alert rules
# Grafana Cloud products
gcx synthetic-monitoring checks list # list synthetic monitoring checks
gcx irm oncall schedules list # list on-call schedules
gcx k6 load-tests list # list k6 load tests
# Query more datasources
gcx logs query '{app="nginx"} |= "error"' --since 1h
gcx traces query '{.cluster="dev-us-central-0"}' --since 1hgcx ships a portable Agent Skills bundle for setup, dashboard creation and GitOps, datasource exploration, alert investigation, structured debugging, SLO management, Synthetic Monitoring workflows, Knowledge Graph diagnosis, project scaffolding, resource generation and import, and end-to-end observability rollout.
See the full skill inventory in the Claude plugin README.
For Claude Code
Use the dedicated Claude Code plugin:
/plugin marketplace add grafana/gcx
/plugin install gcx@gcx-marketplace
For other .agents-compatible harnesses
For example: OpenAI Codex, OpenCode, and Pi. View the skills shipped in the bundle with:
gcx agent skills list
24 skill(s) bundled with gcx
SKILL INSTALLED DESCRIPTION
create-dashboard yes Design and create dashboards with datasource discovery and snapshot-based visual iteration.
debug-with-grafana yes Structured workflow for investigating application problems with Grafana observability data.
....Install the bundle into ~/.agents/skills with:
gcx agent skills install --allIf your installed skills drift from the bundle shipped in your current gcx
version, gcx may show an interactive reminder suggesting:
gcx agent skills updateTo disable that reminder entirely, set:
export GCX_NO_UPDATE_NOTIFIER=1Here's what it looks like when your coding agent has access to production. This example uses the Grafana Assistant, which requires Grafana Cloud — see the compatibility matrix; the workflows below work on any Grafana.
1. An alert fires — P95 latency on the checkout service crosses the SLO threshold.
2. The Assistant investigates — Your coding agent calls the Grafana Assistant through gcx. The Assistant has already started its investigation — it traces the issue to a missing index on customer_id causing full table scans under load.
3. It fixes the issue — Drafts the migration, adds the index.
4. It prevents recurrence — Instruments the service with OpenTelemetry spans, sets up a Synthetic Monitoring check on the checkout flow, and creates an alert rule on query duration.
5. It ships — Opens a PR, tests pass, deploys to production. The alert resolves.
Investigation, fix, instrumentation, monitoring — without the developer ever leaving their editor. The Grafana Assistant provides the intelligence; gcx provides the interface. And because it all builds on everything you've already configured in Grafana — your dashboards, your alerts, your datasources — no other tool can give you this depth out of the box.
$ gcx assistant investigations list
ID TITLE STATUS UPDATED
abc1 Checkout P95 latency breach active 2m ago
def2 Memory leak in payment-svc resolved 1h agoThe agentic workflow above is one example. gcx supports a wide range of workflows:
- Resource GitOps — Pull resources to local files, let your agent edit them, push back to Grafana (
gcx resources pull/gcx resources push) - Explore your data — Discover datasources, metrics, labels, and log streams before writing queries (
gcx datasources list,gcx metrics labels) - SLO management — Create, monitor, and investigate SLOs from your terminal (
gcx slo definitions list,gcx slo reports list) - Onboarding & setup — Instrument a Kubernetes cluster and configure Grafana Cloud products (
gcx instrumentation setup) - Observability as Code — Scaffold a project, import existing dashboards as Go code, lint, and deploy (
gcx dev scaffold,gcx dev import)
| Grafana | Support level |
|---|---|
| Grafana Cloud | Full support. Everything in this README, including Cloud-only products (SLO, Synthetic Monitoring, IRM, k6, Fleet, Adaptive Telemetry, Assistant). |
| Grafana 13+ (OSS / Enterprise) | Full support of self-hosted features. All app-platform API groups gcx relies on are enabled by default. |
| Grafana 12.x (OSS / Enterprise) | Most features supported. Features built on app-platform API groups that are not yet enabled by default in 12 need an explicit feature toggle — see ‡ below for the known case. |
| Grafana < 12 | Unsupported. gcx detects the server version and exits with code 6 (version incompatible). |
Grafana is progressively migrating its APIs to app-platform (Kubernetes-style) API groups, and each group flips to enabled-by-default in a different release. When a command needs an API group your stack does not serve, upgrade or enable the corresponding feature toggle. Per-command declaration of these requirements (min version, feature toggles) is tracked in #989.
| Feature | Commands | OSS | Enterprise | Cloud | BYOC |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Resource management (dashboards, folders) | resources |
✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Alert rules | alert |
✓ ‡ | ✓ ‡ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Raw API passthrough | api |
✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Observability as Code | dev |
✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Signal queries (metrics, logs, traces, profiles) | metrics, logs, traces, profiles |
✓ † | ✓ † | ✓ | ✓ |
| SLO, Synthetic Monitoring, IRM, k6, Fleet, etc. | slo, synthetic-monitoring, irm, k6, fleet |
✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ◐ |
| Adaptive Metrics / Logs / Traces | metrics adaptive, logs adaptive, traces adaptive |
✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ◐ |
| Grafana Assistant | assistant |
✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ |
‡ Grafana-managed rule writes — reading alert rules (gcx alert rules, gcx alert groups) and datasource-managed ruler writes (gcx alert ruler) work on Grafana 12+. Writing Grafana-managed rules via the resources tier (gcx resources pull/push alertrules) requires Grafana 13+, where the rules.alerting.grafana.app API is enabled by default. On Grafana 12 it must be enabled explicitly with the kubernetesAlertingRules feature toggle (experimental in 12.x, requires a restart, and Unified Alerting must be enabled):
[feature_toggles]
kubernetesAlertingRules = true† Self-hosted signal queries — gcx metrics query, gcx logs query, gcx traces query, and gcx profiles query work against self-hosted datasources (Prometheus, Loki, Tempo, Pyroscope), but datasource endpoints must be configured manually. For Grafana Cloud, endpoints are auto-discovered from your stack.
◐ BYOC — Bring Your Own Cloud runs the Grafana stack on your own infrastructure while connecting to the Grafana Cloud control plane. Core Grafana features (dashboards, alerts, signal queries) work in full. Cloud product availability (SLO, Synthetic Monitoring, IRM, etc.) depends on which plugins are installed and configured in your BYOC stack.
gcx provides dedicated commands for each Grafana Cloud product:
| Product | Command | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| SLOs | gcx slo |
slo definitions list, slo reports list |
| Synthetic Monitoring | gcx synthetic-monitoring |
synthetic-monitoring checks list, synthetic-monitoring probes list |
| IRM | gcx irm |
irm oncall schedules list, irm oncall integrations list, irm incidents list, irm incidents create -f incident.yaml |
| Alerting | gcx alert |
alert rules list, alert groups list |
| k6 Cloud | gcx k6 |
k6 load-tests list, k6 runs list |
| Fleet Management | gcx fleet |
fleet pipelines list, fleet collectors list |
| Knowledge Graph | gcx kg |
kg status, kg entities list, kg entities inspect |
| Frontend Observability | gcx frontend |
frontend apps list, frontend apps get |
| App Observability | gcx appo11y |
appo11y overrides get, appo11y settings get |
| Agent Observability | gcx agento11y |
agento11y conversations list, agento11y agents list, agento11y rules list |
| Assistant | gcx assistant |
assistant prompt, assistant investigations list, assistant mcp-servers list |
| Adaptive Metrics | gcx metrics adaptive |
metrics adaptive recommendations list, metrics adaptive rules list |
| Adaptive Logs | gcx logs adaptive |
logs adaptive patterns list, logs adaptive drop-rules list |
| Adaptive Traces | gcx traces adaptive |
traces adaptive recommendations list, traces adaptive policies list |
| Profiles (Pyroscope) | gcx profiles |
profiles query, profiles labels |
| Traces (Tempo) | gcx traces |
traces query, traces get, traces labels |
Note — Grafana Cloud costs: gcx itself is free, but some of these products are billed based on usage: Grafana Assistant per token consumed (including requests made through gcx), Synthetic Monitoring per test execution, k6 per Virtual User Hour, and IRM per monthly active user. Queries and resource push/pull are not billed. See Costs and billing and the Grafana Cloud Cost Management and Billing documentation.
Manage both Grafana-native resources (dashboards, folders) and Grafana Cloud resources from a single CLI:
# Pull dashboards and folders to local files
gcx resources pull dashboards -p ./resources -o yaml
gcx resources pull folders -p ./resources -o yaml
# Push local changes back to Grafana
gcx resources push -p ./resources
# Preview changes without applying
gcx resources push -p ./resources --dry-run
# Validate resources before pushing
gcx resources validate -p ./resources
# Edit a dashboard interactively (opens $EDITOR)
gcx resources edit dashboards/my-dashboard
# Delete a resource
gcx resources delete dashboards/my-dashboardInspect alerting rules and query datasources directly:
# Alert rules
gcx alert rules list
gcx alert groups list
# PromQL queries
gcx metrics query 'rate(http_requests_total[5m])' --since 1h
gcx metrics labels
gcx metrics metadata
# LogQL queries
gcx logs query '{app="nginx"} |= "error"' --since 1h
gcx logs labels
gcx logs series --match '{app="nginx"}'gcx also supports Pyroscope (profiling) and Tempo (traces) datasources.
gcx includes tools for managing Grafana resources as Go code using the grafana-foundation-sdk:
# Scaffold a new project
gcx dev scaffold --project my-dashboards
# Import existing dashboards from Grafana as Go builder code
gcx dev import dashboards
# Live-reload dev server (preview dashboards in browser)
gcx dev serve ./resources
# Lint resources with built-in and custom Rego rules
gcx dev lint run ./resources
gcx dev lint list-rules # list available rules
gcx dev lint new dashboard my-rule # create custom rule
# Build and push
go run . && gcx resources push -p ./resourcesFor anything not covered by built-in commands, use the API passthrough:
gcx api /api/health
gcx api /api/datasources -o yaml
gcx api /api/dashboards/db -d @dashboard.json
gcx api /api/dashboards/uid/my-dashboard -X DELETEPull resources to files, version in git, push back:
# Pull all resources
gcx resources pull -p ./resources -o yaml
# Commit to git
git add ./resources && git commit -m "snapshot Grafana resources"
# Push changes from git to Grafana
gcx resources push -p ./resourcesgcx push is idempotent — running it multiple times produces the same result. Folders are automatically pushed before dashboards to satisfy dependencies.
gcx resources push/pull vs GitSync: Grafana's Git Sync provides bi-directional sync between a git repo and Grafana for dashboards.
gcx resources push/pullenables users to create their own as-code resource synchronisation workflows.gcx resources push/pullalso works with all resources available ingcx resources get, not just dashboards.
# .github/workflows/deploy-resources.yaml
name: Deploy Grafana Resources
on:
push:
branches: [main]
paths: ['resources/**']
jobs:
deploy:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v4
- name: Install gcx
run: |
curl -fL "$(curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/grafana/gcx/releases/latest | grep browser_download_url | grep linux_amd64.tar.gz | cut -d '"' -f 4)" | tar xz gcx
chmod +x gcx && sudo mv gcx /usr/local/bin/
- name: Deploy resources
env:
GRAFANA_SERVER: ${{ secrets.GRAFANA_PROD_URL }}
GRAFANA_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GRAFANA_PROD_TOKEN }}
run: |
gcx resources validate -p ./resources
gcx resources push -p ./resources --on-error abortgcx resourcescommands are designed for non-interactive use, apart fromedit, which opens an external editorresources deletehas no confirmation prompt. Named selectors proceed without--force; a type-only selector such asdashboardsrequires--force(--yesalso enables it) and can delete every matching resource in the selected context and namespace--dry-runonpushanddeleteto preview changes--on-error abort|fail|ignoreto control error behavior-o jsonor-o yamlfor machine-parseable output
| Topic | Description |
|---|---|
| Installation | Install gcx on macOS, Linux, and Windows |
| Configuration | Contexts, authentication, environment variables |
| Managing Resources | Get, push, pull, delete, edit, validate |
| Dashboards as Code | Dashboard-as-code workflow with live dev server |
| Linting Resources | Lint dashboards and alert rules with Rego policies |
| CLI Reference | Full command reference (auto-generated) |
gcx reports limited usage statistics about itself to Grafana Labs. This data is used to understand which commands and flags are used most, where commands fail, and which commands people try that don’t exist, so we can make the product better.
To find out more about gcx usage statistics, or for information on how to disable it, go to the Grafana Labs documentation.
See our contributing guide.
Apache 2.0 — see LICENSE.
