Grafana Cloud MCP Server Setup

The Grafana MCP server exposes Grafana Cloud capabilities as tools that AI agents can call via the Model Context Protocol. Agents can then query metrics, search dashboards, manage alerts, investigate incidents, and interact with Fleet Management without leaving the coding environment.

Transports: stdio (agent spawns the server as a subprocess, simplest), or SSE (server runs independently, agents connect via HTTP — see references/sse-transport.md).

Common Workflows

Connecting Claude Code to Grafana (stdio)

# 1. Install the server
go install github.com/grafana/mcp-grafana/cmd/mcp-grafana@latest

# 2. Verify the binary
mcp-grafana --version
# If "command not found": ensure $GOPATH/bin (or $HOME/go/bin) is on PATH.

3. Get a service-account token: Grafana Cloud → Administration → Service Accounts → create with Viewer role (add Editor only if you need writes) → generate token. Note the Grafana URL (e.g. https://myorg.grafana.net).

4. Wire ~/.claude/settings.json (or project-local .claude/settings.json):

   {
     "mcpServers": {
       "grafana": {
         "command": "mcp-grafana",
         "args": ["--disable-write"],
         "env": {
           "GRAFANA_URL": "https://myorg.grafana.net",
           "GRAFANA_API_KEY": "glsa_xxxx"
         }
       }
     }
   }

   --disable-write is the safer default — drop it once you've verified the read path works.

5. Restart Claude Code, then verify:

   /mcp

   The grafana server should appear with its tool list. Then ask:

   What data sources are configured in my Grafana instance?

   A clean response = working. If the tool call fails:

   • Check GRAFANA_URL has no trailing slash
   • Confirm the API key hasn't expired
   • Re-run with mcp-grafana --debug to see raw request/response

Connecting Cursor

Same Grafana token. Settings → Features → MCP Servers (or edit ~/.cursor/mcp.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "grafana": {
      "command": "mcp-grafana",
      "args": ["--disable-write"],
      "env": {
        "GRAFANA_URL": "https://myorg.grafana.net",
        "GRAFANA_API_KEY": "glsa_xxxx"
      }
    }
  }
}

Verify the same way — Cursor surfaces MCP servers in its agent panel; run a query like "list dashboards tagged kubernetes".

Sharing the server across a team (SSE)

Switch from stdio to SSE so the server runs once and many agents connect to it. Full setup with VS Code config in references/sse-transport.md.

Security considerations

• API keys belong in env vars or a secrets manager — never in committed files.
• Use --disable-write for shared environments and CI; only lift it on the specific machine where the agent should be allowed to mutate Grafana.
• Scope service-account permissions to the minimum: Viewer is enough for queries and dashboard reads. Only grant Editor when the agent needs to create dashboards or annotations.
• Rotate tokens periodically via Administration → Service Accounts.

References

• references/tools.md — full list of MCP tools exposed (query / dashboard / alerting / Fleet Management / annotations) and how to discover the live set
• references/sse-transport.md — SSE setup for team sharing and VS Code, with stdio-vs-SSE decision matrix + common failure modes
• references/a2a.md — Agent-to-Agent (A2A) protocol for delegating reasoning to the Grafana Assistant (vs direct tool calls via MCP)

External resources

• Grafana MCP server (github.com/grafana/mcp-grafana)
• Model Context Protocol specification
• Grafana Cloud API documentation
• Grafana Assistant documentation