Use Grafana as a data source for Chartcastr. Connect your Grafana host (self-hosted or Grafana Cloud) with a service-account token and Chartcastr will execute queries against your existing datasources — Prometheus, Loki, MySQL, Postgres, InfluxDB, and more — and chart the result.Each Chartcastr source can pulse up to two metrics rendered as a line or bar chart. When two metrics have very different scales (say request rate at 5,000/s and error percentage at 0–5%), flip on the split Y-axis option to keep both legible.
Grafana metrics are user-defined — there is no preset metric list like Plausible or PostHog. You supply the query expression that Grafana itself would run.
In your Grafana Cloud stack, go to Administration → Users and access → Service accounts. You can find it quickly by pressing Cmd+K (or Ctrl+K) and searching for “service”.
Use the command palette to find Service accounts quickly
Click Add service account, give it a name (e.g. chartcastr-integration), and set the role to Viewer. Viewer access is all Chartcastr needs — it only reads metric data.
Create a new service account with the Viewer role
In your Grafana instance, go to Administration → Users and access → Service accounts. You can find it quickly by pressing Cmd+K (or Ctrl+K) and searching for “service”.Click Add service account, give it a name (e.g. chartcastr-integration), and set the role to Viewer. Viewer access is all Chartcastr needs — it only reads metric data.
Service accounts require Grafana 8.5 or later. If you’re on an older version, upgrade before proceeding or use a basic-auth API key instead (contact support).
2
Generate a service account token
Click into the service account you just created, then click Add service account token.
Add a token to the service account
Give the token a display name and set an expiration date. We recommend 1 year — long enough to avoid frequent rotation, short enough to limit exposure if the token is ever compromised. Copy the generated glsa_... token; you won’t be able to view it again.
Store the token somewhere safe before closing the dialog. Grafana only shows it once.
3
Connect in Chartcastr
In Chartcastr, go to New Source and select Grafana. Enter:
Grafana host — the full URL of your Grafana instance
Grafana Cloud
Self-hosted Grafana
Your Grafana Cloud URL looks like https://yourorg.grafana.net. Find it in the Grafana Cloud portal under your stack details.
Use the URL your team browses to — e.g. https://grafana.example.com or http://localhost:3000 for local setups. Make sure the host is reachable from the internet (Chartcastr’s servers need to reach it).
Service account token — the glsa_... token from the previous step
Click Test & Connect to validate the connection.
4
Pick a datasource
Chartcastr loads the list of datasources available to your service account. Pick the one your metric lives in (Prometheus, Loki, your SQL database, etc.).
5
Enter a query
Paste the query expression for your metric — PromQL for Prometheus, LogQL for Loki, raw SQL for SQL datasources. Add an optional label to use in the legend.Example PromQL:
sum(rate(http_requests_total{job="api"}[5m]))
Example LogQL:
sum(count_over_time({app="api"} |= "ERROR"[5m]))
6
(Optional) Add a second metric
Click Add second metric to overlay a second series on the same chart. If the two metrics have very different ranges, enable Split Y-axis so each gets its own scale.
7
Pick chart type + window
Choose Line or Bar, then pick how far back to look (1 hour, 6 hours, 24 hours, 7 days, or 30 days).
8
Preview and save
Click Preview chart to see what the rendered chart looks like with live data. Save the source, then create a connection to your Slack channel or email destination.
Chartcastr’s Grafana integration runs queries via Grafana’s /api/ds/query endpoint, which supports any datasource installed in your Grafana — including:
Prometheus (PromQL)
Loki (LogQL)
MySQL / Postgres / MSSQL (SQL)
InfluxDB (InfluxQL / Flux)
ClickHouse
Any community datasource plugin that accepts a query field
Only integer metrics: values are rounded to integers. This is fine for counts and rates but means decimal-precision metrics (e.g. 0.823 ratios) will lose precision.
Time-series only: queries must return a time-series shape. Single-value (instant) queries are not yet supported.
Service-account token is encrypted: stored AES-256-GCM-encrypted at rest, never exposed back to the client.
Self-hosted reachability: Chartcastr’s servers must be able to reach your Grafana host over HTTPS. If your Grafana is behind a private network or VPN, use Grafana Cloud or expose it via a reverse proxy with a valid TLS certificate.
