Get started with Grafana Assistant on Grafana Labs

Set up Grafana Assistant in Grafana Cloud

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 19:40:13 +0100

Prepare your stack

Review the required access and setup before you enable Assistant in Grafana Cloud.

A Grafana Cloud account: Free tier is enough. Create an account if you need one.
You have administrator permissions in your Grafana Cloud stack.
You have data sources configured (recommended). Assistant works best with monitoring data in place; refer to Query data for supported data sources.

Enable Assistant in Grafana Cloud

Assistant is enabled at the stack level by a Grafana Cloud stack administrator. The setup flow includes the Assistant terms and conditions, and the setting that turns Assistant on for users with access in your stack.

After an administrator enables Assistant, the sparkle icon appears in the top-right corner of Grafana for users with access in your stack. For full setup instructions, refer to Set up Grafana Assistant in Grafana Cloud.

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.

Start your first conversation

Open Assistant in the top-right corner of Grafana or select Assistant from the left navigation menu.

Try the tutorial

When you first open Assistant, the tutorial option appears. It takes you through asking questions, using @ mentions to reference specific data sources and dashboards, and creating and updating dashboards.

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

Run your first query

Start with a simple question to explore your data, for example:

Show me CPU usage for the API service

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

If your stack doesn’t have monitoring data yet, connect a data source first. Assistant works best when it has telemetry to query. Refer to Query data for supported data sources.

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 more specific:

Show me error rates from @my-application-logs

Configure quickstart prompts

Quickstart prompts let you trigger common prompts with one click. Your Grafana administrator can publish team quickstarts in Assistant settings.

Use quickstarts to standardize common prompts for a team or save prompts you reuse in your own work. For full setup instructions, refer to Configure quickstart prompts.

Set up Grafana Assistant in self-managed Grafana

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 19:40:13 +0100

Review the hybrid model

Assistant uses a hybrid deployment model for self-managed installations. The Assistant UI runs in your own Grafana deployment. The backend, usage limits, and billing stay in a Grafana Cloud stack you connect during setup.

When you use Assistant, the prompts you submit and the query context needed to generate a response are sent to the Grafana Cloud backend for processing. Your underlying data sources and infrastructure remain in your own environment.

For full details on data handling, refer to Manage your data privacy and security.

Prepare your deployments

Review the required Grafana Cloud and self-managed Grafana access before you connect your deployment.

You have a Grafana Cloud stack with Assistant enabled. Refer to Set up Grafana Assistant in Grafana Cloud for instructions.
You have a self-managed Grafana 13.0.0 or later deployment.
You have organization administrator access in the self-managed Grafana deployment.
You have administrator access in the Grafana Cloud stack.

Connect your deployment

Connect your self-managed Grafana deployment to the Grafana Cloud stack that provides the Assistant backend.

The connection flow installs the Assistant app in your self-managed Grafana instance and pairs it with your Grafana Cloud stack through an authorization flow. After the connection succeeds, Assistant becomes available in the self-managed Grafana UI.

For full setup instructions, refer to Set up Grafana Assistant in self-managed Grafana.

Note
Connect to Grafana Cloud sends your Grafana URL, including internal hostnames, to Grafana Cloud so the two deployments can be paired.

Review available features

After you connect, core chat, querying, dashboarding, and navigation are available in self-managed Grafana. Some Grafana Cloud-only features aren’t. For the full comparison, refer to What is Grafana Assistant? and Set up Grafana Assistant in self-managed Grafana.

Use Learn mode

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Define Learn mode

Learn mode turns Grafana Assistant into a guided coach. It suggests lessons based on your role, the Grafana products you want to use, and the services in your environment.

Prepare your setup

Prepare your Assistant setup and data sources before you start a lesson.

Set up and get started with Grafana Assistant. Refer to Get started with Grafana Assistant for instructions.
Connect the data sources you want the Assistant to use for context.

Start a lesson

Open Assistant and switch to Learn. The Assistant asks about your role, the products or features you want to understand, and the problem you’re trying to solve, for example:

I’m an SRE. Teach me how to use metrics, logs, and traces to look into latency for our checkout service.

Lessons teach one concept or action at a time. The Assistant pauses between steps and asks before it creates or changes anything.

For full details, refer to Use Learn mode.