---
title: "Prerequisites | Grafana Labs"
description: "Grafana Cloud, Assistant, a supported data source with telemetry for a real service, and permission to create, calibrate, and start Watchers."
---

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

# Prerequisites

To complete the hands-on path, you need the following.

| Requirement                                                                                       | Why you need it                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               |
|---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| **Grafana Cloud account** ([Create an account](https://grafana.com/signup/cloud/connect-account)) | Watchers need a Grafana Cloud stack.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          |
| **Grafana Assistant enabled**                                                                     | Watchers are an Assistant capability. Accept any required Assistant terms.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    |
| **A supported data source with telemetry for a real service**                                     | Watchers support Prometheus, Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus, Loki, BigQuery, Infinity, CloudWatch, Synthetic Monitoring, Tempo, and Pyroscope data sources that you can read and query. Assistant builds checks from live telemetry, and queries that return no data can stop calibration. Watcher runs use the stack’s Assistant service account, not your identity. Data sources with team label-based access control (LBAC) rules aren’t supported. |
| **Watchers permissions**                                                                          | `grafana-assistant-app.watcher-agents:read` to view, `:create` and `:write` together to create a watcher (creating also starts calibration), `:write` to calibrate, start, and pause, `:create` to run once, and `:delete` to delete. You also need `plugins.app:access` for the Assistant plugin.                                                                                                                                                            |

## Complete setup first

If Assistant isn’t enabled on your stack, complete [Get started with Grafana Assistant](https://grafana.com/docs/learning-paths/get-started-grafana-assistant/) first.

For the full permission list, refer to [Manage Assistant access with RBAC](https://grafana.com/docs/grafana-cloud/platform/grafana-assistant/privacy-and-security/rbac/).