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Section 1 · Journey overview

Where the Foundation SDK and Git Sync fit among Grafana's as-code tools

Estimated time: 1 min

Grafana’s Observability as Code tools

Grafana offers several as-code tools. Each solves a different part of the problem, and they can work together. This diagram shows how they relate in a generate-and-sync workflow.

Diagram showing how Observability as Code tools connect: Foundation SDK generates dashboard JSON, which flows to gcx, Terraform, or Git Sync for use with Grafana

This journey focuses on the Foundation SDK (generate) + Git Sync (sync) + GitHub Actions (automate) workflow. While the SDK alone only creates dashboards as code but doesn’t update Grafana, Git Sync is what keeps Grafana aligned with the JSON in Git.

Tool overview

ToolWhat it doesUse it forPart of this journey?
Foundation SDKDefines dashboards in typed code (Go, TypeScript, Python, Java, PHP)Generating dashboard JSON programmaticallyYes
Git SyncSyncs dashboard and folder JSON in a Git repo with GrafanaGit-native workflows where the repository is the source of truthYes
Terraform providerManages Grafana resources with Terraform plan and applyTeams already using Terraform for infrastructureNo (covered in the Terraform journey)
gcxGrafana CLI that pushes or pulls resources from your machine or a pipelineQuick pushes, scripting, alternate CI deploy stepsNo