Metrics & Grafana

You are the observability operator for the Happy infrastructure. You can query live Prometheus metrics, manage Grafana dashboards as code, and investigate production behavior.

Environment Variables

Credentials are stored in the repo root .env file (gitignored). Load them before running commands:

GRAFANA_URL=...
GRAFANA_USER=...
GRAFANA_PASSWORD=...
GRAFANA_PROMETHEUS_UID=...

To load in shell:

set -a; source .env; set +a

All commands below use $GRAFANA_URL, $GRAFANA_USER, $GRAFANA_PASSWORD, and $GRAFANA_PROMETHEUS_UID from the environment.

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Prerequisites

Install grafanactl

go install github.com/grafana/grafanactl/cmd/grafanactl@latest

Ensure $HOME/go/bin is on your PATH.

Configure grafanactl

# Load env vars first
set -a; source .env; set +a

# Create a context for the Happy Grafana instance
grafanactl config set contexts.happy.grafana.server "$GRAFANA_URL"
grafanactl config set contexts.happy.grafana.user "$GRAFANA_USER"
grafanactl config set contexts.happy.grafana.password "$GRAFANA_PASSWORD"
grafanactl config set contexts.happy.grafana.org-id 1

# Switch to the context
grafanactl config use-context happy

# Verify
grafanactl config check

Config file lives at ~/Library/Application Support/grafanactl/config.yaml (macOS) or ~/.config/grafanactl/config.yaml (Linux).

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grafanactl CLI Reference

List resources

grafanactl resources list                    # List all resource types
grafanactl resources get dashboards          # List all dashboards
grafanactl resources get folders             # List all folders

Pull dashboards (export to disk)

grafanactl resources pull dashboards -p ./resources -o json
grafanactl resources pull dashboards/DASHBOARD_ID -p ./resources -o json

Push dashboards (deploy from disk)

# Push all dashboards from ./resources
grafanactl resources push dashboards -p ./resources

# Push a specific dashboard
grafanactl resources push dashboards/DASHBOARD_ID -p ./resources

# IMPORTANT: Use --omit-manager-fields to keep dashboards editable from the Grafana UI
grafanactl resources push dashboards -p ./resources --omit-manager-fields

# Dry run (no changes)
grafanactl resources push dashboards -p ./resources --dry-run

Workflow: Edit a dashboard

# 1. Pull current state
mkdir -p /tmp/grafana-work
grafanactl resources pull dashboards -p /tmp/grafana-work -o json

# 2. Edit the JSON files (add panels, modify queries, etc.)

# 3. Push back — always use --omit-manager-fields to avoid locking the UI
grafanactl resources push dashboards -p /tmp/grafana-work --omit-manager-fields

Warning: Pushing without --omit-manager-fields marks the dashboard as "provisioned" and locks it from UI edits. Always include this flag unless you explicitly want CLI-only management.

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Querying Prometheus Directly

You can query Prometheus through Grafana's datasource proxy API. This is useful for live investigation without touching the Grafana UI.

Instant query (current value)

curl -s -u "$GRAFANA_USER:$GRAFANA_PASSWORD" \
  --data-urlencode 'query=YOUR_PROMQL_HERE' \
  "$GRAFANA_URL/api/datasources/proxy/uid/$GRAFANA_PROMETHEUS_UID/api/v1/query" \
  | python3 -m json.tool

Range query (time series)

curl -s -u "$GRAFANA_USER:$GRAFANA_PASSWORD" \
  --data-urlencode 'query=YOUR_PROMQL_HERE' \
  --data-urlencode 'start=UNIX_TIMESTAMP' \
  --data-urlencode 'end=UNIX_TIMESTAMP' \
  --data-urlencode 'step=60' \
  "$GRAFANA_URL/api/datasources/proxy/uid/$GRAFANA_PROMETHEUS_UID/api/v1/query_range" \
  | python3 -m json.tool

List all metric names

curl -s -u "$GRAFANA_USER:$GRAFANA_PASSWORD" \
  "$GRAFANA_URL/api/datasources/proxy/uid/$GRAFANA_PROMETHEUS_UID/api/v1/label/__name__/values" \
  | python3 -c "import json,sys; [print(n) for n in json.load(sys.stdin)['data']]"

Filter metric names

# Find all RPC-related metrics
curl -s -u "$GRAFANA_USER:$GRAFANA_PASSWORD" \
  "$GRAFANA_URL/api/datasources/proxy/uid/$GRAFANA_PROMETHEUS_UID/api/v1/label/__name__/values" \
  | python3 -c "import json,sys; [print(n) for n in json.load(sys.stdin)['data'] if 'rpc' in n.lower()]"

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Key Metrics

Application metrics (handy-server)

Metric	Type	Description
rpc_calls_total	counter	RPC calls by method and result (success, not_available, target_disconnected, timeout)
rpc_call_duration_seconds_bucket	histogram	RPC call duration by method
rpc_lookup_retries_bucket	histogram	Number of retries per socket lookup by method
rpc_fetchsockets_timeouts_total	counter	fetchSockets timeout count by context (lookup, presence)
websocket_connections_total	gauge	Active WebSocket connections by type
websocket_events_total	counter	WebSocket events by type
http_requests_total	counter	HTTP requests by method, route, status
http_request_duration_seconds_bucket	histogram	HTTP request duration by route
session_cache_operations_total	counter	Session cache hits/misses by operation
session_alive_events_total	counter	Session keepalive events
machine_alive_events_total	counter	Machine keepalive events
database_records_total	gauge	Record counts by table
database_updates_skipped_total	counter	Skipped DB updates by type

Useful PromQL queries

# RPC success rate by method
sum by(method) (rate(rpc_calls_total{result="success"}[5m]))
/ (sum by(method) (rate(rpc_calls_total[5m])))

# RPC failures by method and reason
sum by (method, result) (rate(rpc_calls_total{result!="success"}[5m]))

# RPC failures by type only
sum by (result) (rate(rpc_calls_total{result!="success"}[5m]))

# RPC P95 latency by method
histogram_quantile(0.95, sum by (method, le) (rate(rpc_call_duration_seconds_bucket[5m])))

# Socket lookup retry distribution (P95)
histogram_quantile(0.95, sum by (method, le) (rate(rpc_lookup_retries_bucket[5m])))

# fetchSockets timeout rate by context
sum by (context) (rate(rpc_fetchsockets_timeouts_total[5m]))

# HTTP error rate
sum(rate(http_requests_total{status=~"5.."}[5m])) / sum(rate(http_requests_total[5m]))

# Top routes by request rate
topk(10, sum by(method, route) (rate(http_requests_total[5m])))

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Dashboards

Happy Server Application Metrics

• ID: 470da978-91f7-4721-be2c-cc451bf074a2
• Tags: happy-server, application, websocket, http, database
• Panels: WebSocket connections, session cache, alive events, HTTP metrics, database stats, RPC metrics

Adding a panel

When adding panels to a dashboard JSON, follow this pattern:

1. Use the Prometheus datasource: {"type": "prometheus", "uid": "$GRAFANA_PROMETHEUS_UID"}
2. Pick the next available id (check existing panels for max id)
3. Position with gridPos: h = height (8 standard), w = width (12 half, 24 full), x = column (0 or 12), y = row
4. Common panel types: stat, timeseries, piechart, bargauge, table
5. Set appropriate unit: percentunit, ops, s, short, reqps

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Tips

• Always pull before editing to get the latest state
• Use --dry-run on push to preview changes
• The --omit-manager-fields flag is essential for hybrid CLI+UI workflows
• Range queries need Unix timestamps — use date +%s to get current time
• When investigating metrics, start with instant queries for current state, then use range queries for trends