dashboard edit-live

Purpose

Fetch one live dashboard into an external editor, then preview, save, or apply the edited result.

When to use

Use this when Grafana already has the closest source dashboard and you want to edit that payload directly, while keeping a clear choice between preview-only, saved draft, and direct live apply flows.

Key flags

• --dashboard-uid: live Grafana dashboard UID to edit.
• --output: local draft path to write after editing. When omitted, edit-live stays ephemeral and does not create a local draft file.
• --apply-live: write the edited payload back to Grafana instead of writing a local draft.
• --publish-dry-run: when --output is set, save the local draft and immediately run the equivalent dashboard publish --dry-run preview.
• --yes: required with --apply-live because it mutates live Grafana.
• --message: revision message used when --apply-live writes back to Grafana.
• --profile, --url, --token, --basic-user, --basic-password: live Grafana connection settings.

Notes

• The command opens $VISUAL, then $EDITOR, then falls back to vi.
• With neither --output nor --apply-live, the command keeps the edit session ephemeral and automatically runs a live publish --dry-run preview instead of writing a draft file.
• With --output, the command writes the edited draft to disk and stops there unless you also add --publish-dry-run.
• After editing, the command prints a review summary that includes blocking validation issues and the suggested next action.
• --apply-live only proceeds when the edited draft keeps dashboard.id null, preserves the source dashboard UID, and has no blocking review issues.
• The edited payload must still contain dashboard.uid.

Examples

# Purpose: Edit one live dashboard and preview the live publish without writing a draft file.
grafana-util dashboard edit-live --profile prod --dashboard-uid cpu-main

# Purpose: Edit one live dashboard and keep the result as a local draft.
grafana-util dashboard edit-live --url http://localhost:3000 --basic-user admin --basic-password admin --dashboard-uid cpu-main --output ./drafts/cpu-main.edited.json

# Purpose: Edit one live dashboard, save the draft, and immediately preview the publish.
grafana-util dashboard edit-live --profile prod --dashboard-uid cpu-main --output ./drafts/cpu-main.edited.json --publish-dry-run

# Purpose: Edit one live dashboard and explicitly write the result back to Grafana.
grafana-util dashboard edit-live --profile prod --dashboard-uid cpu-main --apply-live --yes --message 'Hotfix CPU dashboard'

Related commands

• dashboard fetch-live
• dashboard clone-live
• dashboard publish