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.
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 | What it does | Use it for | Part of this journey? |
|---|
| Foundation SDK | Defines dashboards in typed code (Go, TypeScript, Python, Java, PHP) | Generating dashboard JSON programmatically | Yes |
| Git Sync | Syncs dashboard and folder JSON in a Git repo with Grafana | Git-native workflows where the repository is the source of truth | Yes |
| Terraform provider | Manages Grafana resources with Terraform plan and apply | Teams already using Terraform for infrastructure | No (covered in the Terraform journey) |
| gcx | Grafana CLI that pushes or pulls resources from your machine or a pipeline | Quick pushes, scripting, alternate CI deploy steps | No |
