Grafana Loki

Aggregate and query logs with Grafana Loki, the Prometheus-inspired logging system.

When to Use This Skill

Use this skill when:

• Implementing cost-effective log aggregation
• Building logging for Kubernetes environments
• Integrating logs with Grafana dashboards
• Querying logs with label-based filtering
• Preferring lighter-weight alternative to ELK

Promtail reached EOL on March 2, 2026; use Grafana Alloy or another supported client for new deployments. The 2.9/schema v11/loki-stack examples below are historical and must be migrated with the installed Loki/chart version, not pasted into current production. Retention for boltdb-shipper needs the appropriate compactor setup; table_manager settings alone do not prove expiry. Keep auth-disabled Loki loopback/private behind an authenticated gateway and restrict sensitive host log access. Persist shipper positions to avoid replay on container recreation. Docker discovery requires approved socket access, absent from the Compose fragment; do not grant it blindly. line_length must be explicitly extracted/computed before unwrap, parse errors need filtering and zero-denominator rates need a defined no-data policy. Validate alert delivery and resource limits before raising ingestion quotas.

Prerequisites