Dpm Finder

What it does

When your agent uses it

• Investigating high Grafana Cloud spend
• Hunting noisy / high-cardinality metrics
• Comparing pre/post recording-rule cardinality
• Feeding cost data into dashboards — even when the user says why is my Mimir bill so high?

Example prompts

• “why is my Mimir bill so high?”
• “find the biggest metrics”
• “cardinality offenders”
• “/dpm-finder”

Requirements

• Python 3
• Docker
• A credential in PROMETHEUS_API_KEY

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 1ccacf2. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

• Tool permissions

  Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.

  From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

• Runs code

  Shell commands in SKILL.md call:

  • jq
  • git
  • python3
  • pip
  • curl

  From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

• Network

  Hosts in commands or code, which the agent is likely to contact:

  • github.com

  From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

• Credentials

  Names these keys or tokens, usually read from environment variables:

  • PROMETHEUS_API_KEY

  From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

Dpm Finder loads about 966 tokens when it runs, and up to ~1.4k if it reads all its reference files. Until then it costs about 157 tokens; SKILL.md has 247 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it

~157

When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches

~966

With references · SKILL.md plus every file in references/, read only if the agent opens them

~1.4k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

• NoteMentions a .env fileSKILL.md:27

  2. Configure creds — copy .env_example → .env and fill in:

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from grafana/skills at commit 1ccacf2, republished under its Apache-2.0 licence (© grafana). 247 words, ~966 tokens.

name

dpm-finder

description

Find the Prometheus metrics that drive your Grafana Cloud bill. `dpm-finder` is a Grafana Professional Services CLI that ranks metrics by Data Points per Minute (DPM) with per-label-set breakdown, optional `--cost-per-1000-series` pricing, and a Prometheus-exporter mode. Use when investigating high Grafana Cloud spend, hunting noisy / high-cardinality metrics, comparing pre/post recording-rule cardinality, or feeding cost data into dashboards — even when the user says "why is my Mimir bill so high?", "find the biggest metrics", "cardinality offenders", or "optimize Prometheus cost" without naming dpm-finder.

license

Apache-2.0

# 1. Clone + venv + install
git clone https://github.com/grafana-ps/dpm-finder.git
cd dpm-finder
python3 -m venv venv && source venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

# 2. Configure creds — copy .env_example → .env and fill in:
#    PROMETHEUS_ENDPOINT  https://prometheus-<cluster_slug>.grafana.net  (NOTHING after .net)
#    PROMETHEUS_USERNAME  <numeric stack id>
#    PROMETHEUS_API_KEY   glc_…

# 3. Verify creds before scanning — should return >0 series count
curl -s -u "$PROMETHEUS_USERNAME:$PROMETHEUS_API_KEY" \
  "$PROMETHEUS_ENDPOINT/api/v1/label/__name__/values" | jq '.data | length'

# 4. Run the scan (10-min lookback, 2.0 DPM minimum, top output)
./dpm-finder.py -f json -m 2.0 -t 8 --timeout 120 -l 10

# 5. Read the result — top 10 metrics by DPM
jq -r '.metrics | sort_by(-.dpm) | .[:10][] | "\(.dpm)\t\(.series_count)\t\(.metric_name)"' metric_rates.json

gcx config check          # active stack context
gcx config list-contexts  # all configured stacks
gcx config view           # full config with endpoints

© grafana, Apache-2.0. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

SKILL.md and 1 other file (references) in skills/grafana-cloud/dpm-finder of grafana/skills.

• SKILL.md
• references/cli.md

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 1ccacf2