Distribute a plugin

To distribute a Grafana plugin either to the community or privately, the plugin must be signed so the Grafana application can verify its authenticity. You can do this with the @grafana/sign-plugin package.

info

It's not necessary to sign a plugin during development. The Docker development environment that is scaffolded with @grafana/create-plugin will load the plugin without a signature.

Initial steps

Before signing a plugin, read the Grafana plugin publishing and signing criteria documentation carefully.

@grafana/create-plugin adds the necessary commands and github workflows for signing and distributing a plugin via the Grafana plugins catalog.

Before signing a plugin for the first time please consult the Grafana plugin signature levels documentation to understand the differences between the types of signature level.

1. Create a Grafana Cloud account.
2. Make sure that the first part of the plugin ID matches the slug of your Grafana Cloud account.
   • You can find the plugin ID in the plugin.json file inside your plugin directory. For example, if your account slug is acmecorp, you need to prefix the plugin ID with acmecorp-.
3. Create a Grafana Cloud API key with the PluginPublisher role.
4. Keep a record of this API key as it will be required for signing a plugin.