---
title: "Set up Grafana Assistant in Grafana Cloud | Grafana Cloud documentation"
description: "Enable Grafana Assistant in your Grafana Cloud stack and start chatting with your metrics, logs, traces, profiles, and databases."
---

> For a curated documentation index, see [llms.txt](/llms.txt). For the complete documentation index, see [llms-full.txt](/llms-full.txt).

# Set up Grafana Assistant in Grafana Cloud

Enable Assistant in your Grafana Cloud stack to start chatting with your observability data.

## Before you begin

- A Grafana Cloud stack
- Administrator permissions in your Grafana Cloud stack
- Data sources (recommended) — Assistant works best with monitoring data configured. Refer to [Query data](/docs/grafana-cloud/machine-learning/assistant/guides/querying) for supported data sources and query types.

## Enable Assistant in Grafana Cloud

Enable Assistant for your stack:

1. Navigate to **Administration** > **Plugins and data** > **Plugins**.
2. Search for **Grafana Assistant** or go directly to `/plugins/grafana-assistant-app`.
3. Open the **Enable Assistant** page.
4. Review the terms and conditions.
5. Select the **Assistant enabled** checkbox.
6. Click **Save**.

After you enable Assistant, the sparkle icon appears in the top-right corner of Grafana for all users in your stack.

> Note
> 
> Assistant can appear in the Plugins catalog before it’s enabled. You don’t send data to any AI/LLM provider until a user actively uses an Assistant feature.

## Try the tutorial

When you first open Grafana Assistant, you’ll see the tutorial option. It takes you through asking questions about your systems, using `@` mentions to reference specific data sources and dashboards, creating and updating dashboards, and running guided investigations.

To access the tutorial at any time, click **Menu** in the Assistant chat and select **Open tutorial**.

## Start your first conversation

Open **Assistant** in the top-right corner of Grafana or select **Assistant** from the left navigation menu. This opens a chat interface where you can ask questions in natural language.

### Your first query

Start with a simple question to explore your data:

> Show me CPU usage for the API service

Assistant automatically detects the right data source, generates the query, and presents results with visualizations and insights.

### Try different types of requests

Explore the Assistant’s other workflows:

> Create a dashboard for monitoring my database performance

> Help me build a query to find all error logs from the last hour

> Show me dashboards related to Kubernetes monitoring

> Why is my application responding slowly?

## Use mentions for better results

Type `@` in your message to mention a specific data source, dashboard, or panel. Mentions help Assistant query the right data and give more accurate answers.

For example, instead of:

> Show me error rates

Be specific:

> Show me error rates from @my-application-logs

## Provide feedback

After each response, use the thumbs up and thumbs down icons to improve answer quality. When you give a thumbs down, you can provide additional context about what went wrong.

Refer to the [privacy and security documentation](/docs/grafana-cloud/machine-learning/assistant/privacy-and-security) to learn how Assistant handles your data.

## Limit Assistant to specific stacks

Assistant is available in all Grafana Cloud stacks by default. Within a stack, use RBAC to control who can open Assistant by scoping `plugins.app:access` to `plugins:id:grafana-assistant-app`.

## Opt out or disable after testing

If you tried Assistant and prefer not to keep it enabled, you have several options:

- **Do nothing**: When not enabled by an administrator, Assistant features remain off and you don’t send data to AI providers.
- **Restrict access with RBAC**: Limit who can open Assistant by scoping `plugins.app:access` to `plugins:id:grafana-assistant-app` for only the roles you choose. Refer to [Manage Assistant access with RBAC](/docs/grafana-cloud/machine-learning/assistant/privacy-and-security/rbac).
- **Clean up local usage**: Users can delete conversations in the Assistant UI. Administrators can disconnect MCP servers and OAuth integrations that were added for testing.
- **Disable completely**: Navigate to **Administration** > **Plugins and data** > **Plugins**, search for **Grafana Assistant** or go directly to `/plugins/grafana-assistant-app`, clear the **Assistant enabled** checkbox, and click **Save**.