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Prompts and CLI commands reference

Refer to this document for a list of prompts and CLI commands available through the create-plugin tool.

Prompts​

When running the create-plugin command, the following prompts appear:

What is the name of your plugin?​

Enter the name of your plugin. This helps to identify its purpose.

What is the organization name of your plugin?​

Enter the name of your organization. This is normally your Grafana account username which Grafana uses to help uniquely identify your plugin.

How would you describe your plugin?​

Give your plugin a description. This helps users more easily understand what it does when Grafana distributes the plugin.

What type of plugin would you like?​

Select from the following choices:

  • app: Create a custom out-of-the-box monitoring experience.
  • datasource: Add support for new databases or external APIs.
  • panel: Add new visualizations to dashboards.
  • scenesapp: Create Scenes applications or Scenes plugins. For more information on how Scenes allows you to create dashboard-like experiences in app plugins, see Scenes.

To learn more about the types of plugins, refer to the plugin management guidelines. To learn more about scenes, refer to the Scenes documentation.

Do you want a backend part of your plugin?​

App and data source plugins can have a backend component written in Go. Backend plugins offer powerful features such as:

  • Enable Grafana Alerting for data sources.
  • Connect to non-HTTP services to which a browser normally can’t connect. For example, SQL database servers.
  • Keep state between users. For example, query caching for data sources.
  • Use custom authentication methods and/or authorization checks that aren’t supported in Grafana.
  • Use a custom data source request proxy. To learn more, refer to Backend developer resources.

Do you want to add GitHub CI and Release workflows?​

Add GitHub workflows to your development cycle to help catch issues early or release your plugin to the community.

Do you want to add a GitHub workflow to automatically check Grafana API compatibility on PRs?​

Add a GitHub workflow to regularly check that your plugin is compatible with the latest version of Grafana.

CLI commands​

Use the CLI for essential tasks of plugin development, substituting npm for pnpm, or yarn based on your choice of package manager.

npm run build​

Compiles and bundles the project using Webpack in production mode.

npm run dev​

Runs Webpack in watch mode for development, continually monitoring for changes.

npm run e2e​

Runs Grafana end-to-end tests using Cypress.

npm run e2e:update​

Runs Grafana end-to-end tests and tests any test screenshots, using Cypress.

npm run lint​

Lints the frontend codebase using ESLint with the .gitignore file to ignore certain files. Results are cached locally to speed up future linting tasks.

npm run lint:fix​

Lints the frontend codebase using ESLint and automatically fixes detected issues.

npm run typecheck​

Performs a type-checking process on the frontend code using TypeScript.

npm run server​

Launches the Grafana development server using Docker.

npm run sign​

Signs the Grafana plugin using the latest version of @grafana/sign-plugin.

npm run test​

Executes frontend tests, running only the tests that have changed, and enables a watch mode for ongoing testing.

npm run test:ci​

Runs frontend tests for CI, ensuring it passes even with no tests, and utilizes a maximum of four workers for parallel execution.