dashboard serve

Purpose

Serve one or more dashboard drafts through a lightweight local preview server.

When to use

Use this when you are iterating on one dashboard draft, one draft directory, or one generator command and want a local browser surface without publishing back to Grafana after every change.

Key flags

• --input: local dashboard file or directory to load into the preview server.
• --script: external generator command whose stdout emits one dashboard JSON or YAML document, or an array of documents.
• --script-format: parse --script stdout as json or yaml.
• --watch: extra local files or directories to watch for reloads.
• --no-watch: disable background polling reloads.
• --open-browser: open the preview URL in your default browser after the server starts.
• --address, --port: bind address and port for the local preview server.

Notes

• This server is a lightweight draft preview and document-inspection surface. It does not embed a full local Grafana renderer.
• --input and --script are mutually exclusive. Use --input for local draft files and --script when an external generator already produces the dashboard payload.
• Reload errors stay visible in the preview page so you can keep editing without restarting the server.

Examples

# Purpose: Serve one local draft file.
grafana-util dashboard serve --input ./drafts/cpu-main.json --port 18080 --open-browser

# Purpose: Serve all dashboard drafts in one local directory.
grafana-util dashboard serve --input ./dashboards/raw

# Purpose: Serve one generated dashboard and watch generator inputs for reload.
grafana-util dashboard serve --script 'jsonnet dashboards/cpu.jsonnet' --watch ./dashboards --watch ./lib --port 18080

Related commands

• dashboard review
• dashboard publish
• dashboard edit-live