dashboard-builder

The dashboard-builder skill enables operators to create monitoring dashboards that provide actionable insights from metrics data on platforms such as Grafana and SigNoz. Instead of focusing on displaying every available metric, this skill emphasizes building dashboards that answer critical operational questions like system health, bottlenecks, recent changes, and recommended actions. By structuring dashboards around meaningful operator questions, it ensures that the resulting panels are practical, informative, and directly support decision-making during system monitoring and troubleshooting.

Key features of this skill include the ability to define operating questions focused on health, latency, throughput, resource usage, and service-specific risks; analyzing the target platform's schema, including JSON structure, query language, variables, thresholds, and layout; and building a minimum useful board with structured sections such as overview, performance, resources, and service-specific areas. The skill also provides guidance on removing vanity panels that do not provide real operational value, ensuring each panel has a title, units, and meaningful thresholds. Example panel sets are provided for common services like Elasticsearch, Kafka, and API gateways, illustrating the practical application of these principles.

This skill is particularly suited for site reliability engineers, DevOps teams, and backend engineers responsible for monitoring and maintaining production systems. Use cases include creating dashboards for Kafka, Elasticsearch, or SigNoz, converting raw metrics into operationally useful visualizations, and ensuring that dashboards are structured, clear, and actionable rather than simply aesthetic. It is ideal for teams looking to standardize monitoring practices and provide operators with dashboards that support real-time system decisions.