---
title: "Get started with Grafana Assistant | Grafana Cloud documentation"
description: "Set up and start using Grafana Assistant in Grafana Cloud or in self-managed Grafana connected to Grafana Cloud."
---

> For a curated documentation index, see [llms.txt](/llms.txt). For the complete documentation index, see [llms-full.txt](/llms-full.txt).

# Get started with Grafana Assistant

Grafana Assistant is an AI-powered observability agent. Ask it questions in plain language — “Show me CPU usage” or “Create a dashboard for my database” — and it works across your metrics, logs, traces, profiles, and databases to give you answers without needing deep expertise in each tool.

## What Assistant can do

Assistant acts as your observability expert through five core workflows:

- [**Run investigations**](/docs/grafana-cloud/machine-learning/assistant/guides/investigation): Ask questions about performance, launch investigations, and correlate metrics, logs, traces, profiles, and SQL data.
- [**Manage dashboards**](/docs/grafana-cloud/machine-learning/assistant/guides/dashboarding): Create new monitoring dashboards or refine existing panels, layouts, and variables.
- [**Query data**](/docs/grafana-cloud/machine-learning/assistant/guides/querying): Build and refine PromQL, LogQL, TraceQL, SQL, and k6 queries with validation and optimization tips.
- [**Navigate Grafana resources**](/docs/grafana-cloud/machine-learning/assistant/guides/navigation): Find dashboards, data sources, and related tools without leaving the conversation.
- **Knowledge and best practices**: Ask for Grafana guidance, observability concepts, and monitoring strategies in context.

## Choose your setup

Assistant runs directly in Grafana Cloud, or you can install it in a self-managed Grafana instance and connect it to a Grafana Cloud stack.

- [Set up Grafana Assistant in Grafana Cloud](/docs/grafana-cloud/machine-learning/assistant/get-started/grafana-cloud/)  
  Enable Grafana Assistant in your Grafana Cloud stack and start chatting with your metrics, logs, traces, profiles, and databases.
- [Set up Grafana Assistant in self-managed Grafana](/docs/grafana-cloud/machine-learning/assistant/get-started/self-managed/)  
  Install the Grafana Assistant app in a self-managed Grafana instance, connect it to a Grafana Cloud stack, and review the reduced feature set compared with Grafana Cloud.