Dashboards as code

Every dashboard has a spec in observability/grafana/specs/<uid>.json. observability/grafana/build.py turns each spec into observability/grafana/dashboards/<uid>.json, and Grafana provisions that folder read-only. The spec and the generated JSON are committed together. A reviewer reads the spec diff for intent and the JSON diff for the exact effect.

Inputs

• The task: a new dashboard, a change to one, a UI edit to bring back, or dashboards that exist only in Grafana.
• For a new dashboard: the question it answers, the services it covers and the signals (request rate, errors, latency, saturation, logs).
• For a UI edit: the JSON exported from Grafana (dashboard menu, Export, Export as JSON, with "Export the dashboard to use in another instance" off).

Spec format