Dashboard Builder

---
name: dashboard-builder
description: Build monitoring dashboards that answer real operator questions for Grafana, SigNoz, and similar platforms. Use when turning metrics into a working dashboard instead of a vanity board.
metadata:
  origin: ECC direct-port adaptation
version: "1.0.0"
---

# Dashboard Builder

Use this when the task is to build a dashboard people can operate from.

The goal is not "show every metric." The goal is to answer:

- is it healthy?
- where is the bottleneck?
- what changed?
- what action should someone take?

## When to Use

- "Build a Kafka monitoring dashboard"
- "Create a Grafana dashboard for Elasticsearch"
- "Make a SigNoz dashboard for this service"
- "Turn this metrics list into a real operational dashboard"

## Guardrails

- do not start from visual layout; start from operator questions
- do not include every available metric just because it exists
- do not mix health, throughput, and resource panels without structure
- do not ship panels without titles, units, and sane thresholds

## Workflow

### 1. Define the operating questions

Organize around:

- health / availability
- latency / performance
- throughput / volume
- saturation / resources
- service-specific risk

### 2. Study the target platform schema

Inspect existing dashboards first:

- JSON structure
- query language
- variables
- threshold styling
- section layout

### 3. Build the minimum useful board

Recommended structure:

1. overview
2. performance
3. resources
4. service-specific section

### 4. Cut vanity panels

## Exemplo

```text
Pedido: "dashboard Kafka no Grafana"
Perguntas: lag por partição? (saúde) onde trava? (bottleneck) o que mudou no deploy?
Board: overview → throughput → lag/recursos → 1 seção Kafka (consumer lag, ISR)
Corte: 12 painéis vaidade sem threshold; todo painel com título, unidade e limite
```