---
title: "Prerequisites | Grafana Labs"
description: "What you need before starting the hands-on modules"
---

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

## Required

- **Grafana instance** (version 12 or higher, Cloud or self-managed)
- **Service account token** (an API credential that lets automated tools authenticate to Grafana without using your personal login)
- **GitHub repository** (for the CI/CD section)
- **Terraform** (version 1.0 or later)

## Recommended

- A code editor with HCL support (for example, VS Code with the HashiCorp Terraform extension)
- If you’re interested in managing dashboards as code, refer to the [Dashboards as Code with the Foundation SDK](/docs/learning-hub/dashboards-as-code/) journey