Chainguard Container for mcp-grafana

mcp-grafana is a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for Grafana that enables AI assistants and automation tools to interact with your Grafana dashboards, incidents, alerts, and datasources through a standardized protocol

Chainguard Containers are regularly-updated, secure-by-default container images.

Download this Container Image

For those with access, this container image is available on cgr.dev:

docker pull cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/mcp-grafana:latest

Be sure to replace the ORGANIZATION placeholder with the name used for your organization's private repository within the Chainguard Registry.

Compatibility Notes

Chainguard's mcp-grafana container image is comparable to the upstream image, with the following differences:

• Like all other Chainguard Containers, mcp-grafana features a stripped down, minimal design
• It has few-to-zero CVEs
• It does not run as the root user

Getting started

Pull the mcp-grafana Image

docker pull cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/mcp-grafana

Run the Container

Replace `` with your actual Grafana API key.

docker run --rm -p 8000:8000 \
  -e GRAFANA_URL=http://localhost:3000 \
  -e GRAFANA_API_KEY= \
  mcp/grafana

Once the container is running, the MCP-Grafana server will be listening on port 8000 and ready to accept requests from compatible clients or AI agents.

You do not interact directly with the container via a shell.
Instead, you connect to the MCP-Grafana server from a client application (such as Claude Desktop, VSCode, or another compatible AI tool) or by sending HTTP requests.

Connect a Client or Agent

• Configure your client (e.g., Claude Desktop) to use the MCP-Grafana server.
  This typically involves adding your MCP-Grafana server details to the client’s configuration file.
  For example, in Claude Desktop, add an entry pointing to the MCP-Grafana server.

Invoke Grafana Tools via the Client

• Once connected, you can use your client’s interface to tools which can be found in the upstream doc
• You can use natural language prompts (e.g., “List all dashboards”) or select tools from the client’s tools panel.

Documentation and Resources

• Official Documentation
• GitHub Repository
• Model Context Protocol (MCP) Documentation

What are Chainguard Containers?

Chainguard's free tier of Starter container images are built with Wolfi, our minimal Linux undistro.

All other Chainguard Containers are built with Chainguard OS, Chainguard's minimal Linux operating system designed to produce container images that meet the requirements of a more secure software supply chain.

The main features of Chainguard Containers include:

• Minimal design, without unnecessary software bloat
• Daily builds to ensure container images are up-to-date with available security patches
• High quality build-time SBOMs attesting to the provenance of all artifacts within the image
• Verifiable signatures provided by Sigstore
• Reproducible builds with Cosign and apko (read more about reproducibility)

For cases where you need container images with shells and package managers to build or debug, most Chainguard Containers come paired with a development, or -dev, variant.

In all other cases, including Chainguard Containers tagged as :latest or with a specific version number, the container images include only an open-source application and its runtime dependencies. These minimal container images typically do not contain a shell or package manager.

Although the -dev container image variants have similar security features as their more minimal versions, they include additional software that is typically not necessary in production environments. We recommend using multi-stage builds to copy artifacts from the -dev variant into a more minimal production image.

Need additional packages?

To improve security, Chainguard Containers include only essential dependencies. Need more packages? Chainguard customers can use Custom Assembly to add packages, either through the Console, chainctl, or API.

To use Custom Assembly in the Chainguard Console: navigate to the image you'd like to customize in your Organization's list of images, and click on the Customize image button at the top of the page.

Learn More

Refer to our Chainguard Containers documentation on Chainguard Academy. Chainguard also offers VMs and Libraries — contact us for access.

Trademarks

This software listing is packaged by Chainguard. The trademarks set forth in this offering are owned by their respective companies, and use of them does not imply any affiliation, sponsorship, or endorsement by such companies.