Zero to Dashboard with Grafana Assistant and the Infinity datasource plugin

Fri, 22 May 2026 17:00:00 +0100

What if you didn’t have to write a single query to get a useful dashboard?

In this short video, I go from nothing to a working dashboard in a few minutes — no queries — using Grafana Assistant and the Infinity datasource plugin. The data I’m visualising is the RAWG video game database API, so I end up with a dashboard that helps me decide what to play next.

Why Infinity is fun here

Most Grafana data sources are scoped to a specific kind of backend — Prometheus, Loki, a SQL database. Infinity is different: it lets you treat any REST/JSON/CSV/HTML endpoint as a data source. That means anything with an API can become a dashboard, which is exactly the right shape for goofing around with a games API on a Friday afternoon.

Pair Infinity with Assistant and you don’t even have to know what queries to write — Assistant configures the data source, asks the API the right questions, and builds the panels for you.

Timestamps

00:00 — Intro
00:35 — The RAWG video game database
01:01 — Setting up the Infinity datasource
05:10 — Customising the dashboard with Assistant
09:31 — Closing thoughts

Resources

Step-by-step blog post: using Assistant with the Infinity datasource
Grafana Assistant documentation
Infinity datasource plugin
RAWG video game database API
Get started with Grafana Cloud (free tier)
My notes on Grafana Assistant — everything I’m learning as I work on it

How to use Grafana Assistant with self-hosted Grafana

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 09:00:00 +0100

In case you missed it, possibly the biggest news to come from GrafanaCON this year is that if you’re running self-hosted or open-source Grafana, you can now connect it through your Grafana Cloud account to Grafana Assistant, the purpose-built AI tool for all things Grafana.

In this short tutorial, I show you how to enable Assistant on a self-hosted Grafana instance and go from nothing to a working server-health dashboard with a single prompt.

A quick note on what “for open source” actually means

Assistant itself isn’t open source. But you can now use it with your self-hosted or open-source Grafana instance. The way it works is:

You still need a Grafana Cloud account (the free tier has generous inclusions for Assistant).
You link your self-hosted Grafana to that Cloud account.
Assistant then lights up inside your OSS instance.

Think of the Grafana Cloud account as the key that unlocks Assistant wherever your Grafana lives.

Prerequisites

Grafana OSS v13 or later
A Grafana Cloud account (pricing here)

Enabling Assistant

Go to Administration → Plugins, search for Assistant, and click Install.
Refresh the page, then open the Connection tab.
Click Start Connection. You’ll be prompted to log into Grafana Cloud.
Select the organization and stack you want, then click Authorize connection.
Close the tab. Your self-hosted Grafana is now linked to Assistant.

A first dashboard from nothing

Every Grafana instance ships with a TestData data source — perfect for a first run when you don’t yet have real data wired up. Enable it from Data Sources, then open Assistant (the new icon on the top right).

Switch Assistant’s mode from General to Dashboarding — this mode is tuned for creating and managing dashboards — and ask in plain English, for example:

Hi Assistant, could you create a server health dashboard for me using the TestData data source?

What comes back is a starting dashboard with CPU, memory, disk, and network panels already wired up. From there you can tweak panels, edit queries, or ask Assistant to iterate. You’re not starting from scratch — you’re starting from 80%.

What else Assistant can do

I only showed dashboarding in this video, but Assistant can also:

Answer questions about the data already in your Grafana
Run investigations to troubleshoot production incidents
Learn new skills
Manage alerts
Teach you Grafana

That list keeps growing, so stay tuned.

Resources

Grafana Assistant (product page)
Grafana Cloud pricing
How Grafana Labs handles your data
My notes on Grafana Assistant — everything I’m learning as I work on it
Unlearnings from building Grafana Assistant — my Context Horizon piece on what the team had to unlearn

Tutorial on Nicole van der Hoeven

Zero to Dashboard with Grafana Assistant and the Infinity datasource plugin

Why Infinity is fun here

Timestamps

Resources

How to use Grafana Assistant with self-hosted Grafana

A quick note on what “for open source” actually means

Prerequisites

Enabling Assistant

A first dashboard from nothing

What else Assistant can do

Resources