---
title: "Get started with Assistant Watchers | Grafana Labs"
description: "Create a watcher, calibrate checks against your telemetry, run it, and review the first result."
---

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

# Get started with Assistant Watchers

Assistant Watchers are always-on agents that check a scoped part of your telemetry on a schedule. You describe what to monitor, Assistant calibrates concrete checks against your data, and the watcher raises concern when a run finds something notable.

Watchers are available only in Grafana Cloud. Use them for recurring service health checks, noisy-but-important failure modes, and follow-up monitoring after an incident.

## Here’s what to expect

When you complete this path, you’ll be able to:

- Open Watchers and create a narrow watcher with context, data sources, cadence, and sensitivity
- Calibrate checks and review the calibration baseline
- Trigger **Run now** and pause the automatic runs with the **Active** switch
- Check the watcher’s verdict and review the evidence behind **All clear**, **Flagged**, or **Escalated** in a run report

## Before you begin

- A Grafana Cloud account. [Create an account](https://grafana.com/signup/cloud/connect-account) if you need one.
- Grafana Assistant enabled on your stack. If it isn’t enabled yet, [Get started with Grafana Assistant](https://grafana.com/docs/learning-paths/get-started-grafana-assistant/) shows how.
- At least one Prometheus, Loki, or BigQuery data source with telemetry for a real service. Calibration must save at least one validated query, and queries that return no data can stop it.
- 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.

You can only add data sources you’re allowed to query. Watcher runs then query them as the stack’s Assistant service account, so a watcher keeps running if its creator leaves the organization.

For full setup details, refer to [Use Assistant Watchers](https://grafana.com/docs/grafana-cloud/platform/grafana-assistant/platform/watchers/).

## Troubleshooting

If you get stuck, we’ve got your back! Where appropriate, troubleshooting information is just a click away.

## More to explore

We understand you might want to explore other capabilities not strictly on this path. We’ll provide you opportunities where it makes sense.

Are you ready?

[Let's go!](https://grafana.com/docs/learning-paths/intro-to-assistant-watchers/why-watchers/)