grafana/grafonnet — explained in plain English
Analysis updated 2026-07-25 · repo last pushed 2026-07-23
Generate consistent Grafana dashboards across dev, staging, and production environments from a single template.
Store dashboards in your code repository so changes go through code review and version tracking.
Reuse and share dashboard definitions across teams instead of recreating them manually in the Grafana UI.
Requires installing the Jsonnet compiler and familiarity with Jsonnet configuration language.
Grafonnet is a tool that lets you generate Grafana dashboards using code instead of building them by hand. Grafana is a popular platform for visualizing data, metrics, logs, traces, anything you want to monitor. Instead of clicking through the Grafana UI to create and configure dashboards, you write them in a configuration language called Jsonnet, and the library translates that into the JSON files Grafana understands. At a high level, you write a small script describing your dashboard, its title, panels, data sources, and so on, and run a command that produces the finished dashboard file. This means your dashboards live in your codebase alongside everything else, can be version-controlled, reviewed, and shared through the same workflows your team already uses for software development. This is useful for teams managing many dashboards or environments. If you run infrastructure across multiple stages, say, dev, staging, and production, and need consistent dashboards in each, defining them as code means you can template and reuse them rather than recreating the same work manually. It also helps when many people need to collaborate on dashboard changes, since those changes go through the same review process as any other code. One notable thing about this project is how it stays current with Grafana. The library is automatically generated from Grafana's own API definitions, so when Grafana adds new features or panel types, the library can follow along without someone manually updating it. This was a problem with its predecessor, which was hand-maintained and fell behind. The project is explicitly labeled experimental, with no production guarantees, so teams considering it should understand it comes with that caveat.
Grafonnet lets you write Grafana dashboards as code using Jsonnet instead of building them by hand in the UI, so dashboards can be version-controlled, templated, and shared like any other code.
Mainly Jsonnet. The stack also includes Jsonnet, Grafana.
Active — commit in last 30 days (last push 2026-07-23).
This project is labeled experimental with no production guarantees, license details are not specified in the available documentation.
Setup difficulty is rated moderate, with roughly 30min to a first successful run.
Mainly ops devops.
This repo across BitVibe Labs
double-check against the repo, no cap.