Monitors and dashboards

Inspect, mute, and lint monitors, schedule downtimes, and assemble dashboards from widgets.

Monitors and dashboards follow the shared resource pattern. This page covers their extra commands.

​

Monitors

A monitor runs a query on a schedule and alerts when a condition holds. The monitors API reference lists every field a monitor takes. To see what a monitor has been doing:

$ bronto monitors list
NAME                       WINDOW           THRESHOLD  CREATED     ID
High 5xx rate on checkout  Last 5 minutes   5          2026-05-04  a1f3c9d2-4b6e-4f81-9c2d-7e5b3a8f1c01
Payments latency p95       Last 10 minutes  1000       2026-05-12  b2e4d0a3-5c7f-4092-8d3e-8f6c4b9a2d02
$ bronto monitors get "High 5xx rate on checkout"
{
  "actions": [
    {
      "email": "[e-mail]",
      "type": "EMAIL"
    },
    {
      "email": "[e-mail]",
      "type": "EMAIL"
    }
  ],
  "aux": {
    "from": "0b7c6f2e-1d4a-4c8e-9a51-3f2d8e6b7a10",
    "select": "count(*)",
    "where": "status >= 500"
  },
  "comparison_operator": "ABOVE",
  "description": "More than 5 responses with status >= 500 from checkout-service in 5 minutes",
  "id": "a1f3c9d2-4b6e-4f81-9c2d-7e5b3a8f1c01",
  "last_trigger_ts": 1784452890000,
  "metadata": {
    "created_at": 1777890000000,
    "created_by": "[e-mail]",
    "modified_at": 1780389000000,
    "modified_by": "[e-mail]"
  },
  "monitor_type": "PATTERN",
  "name": "High 5xx rate on checkout",
  "status": "ALERT",
  "threshold": 5,
  "window": "Last 5 minutes"
}
$ bronto monitors events "High 5xx rate on checkout"
MESSAGE                                                      MONITOR_ID                            MONITOR_STATUS  PREVIOUS_STATUS  TIME
count(*) = 7 > 5 for status >= 500 on prod/checkout-service  a1f3c9d2-4b6e-4f81-9c2d-7e5b3a8f1c01  ALERT           OK               2026-07-19 09:21:30 UTC
count(*) = 0 <= 5                                            a1f3c9d2-4b6e-4f81-9c2d-7e5b3a8f1c01  OK              ALERT            2026-07-19 09:26:00 UTC
$ bronto monitors notifications "High 5xx rate on checkout" --since 7d
TIME                     STATUS  MONITOR_STATUS  TYPE   DESTINATION        FAILURE_REASON
2026-07-19 09:21:31 UTC  SENT    ALERT           EMAIL  [e-mail]
2026-07-19 09:21:31 UTC  SENT    ALERT           EMAIL  [e-mail]

bronto monitors events lists the monitor’s recent state changes. Here it went to ALERT when the 502s started and back to OK four and a half minutes later. bronto monitors notifications lists the notifications it sent over --since (default 24h), one per recipient. Tables show times in UTC; -o json keeps the raw Unix milliseconds.

​

Mute and unmute

bronto monitors mute "High 5xx rate on checkout"                       # until you unmute it
bronto monitors mute "High 5xx rate on checkout" --until <epoch-ms>    # until a future time, in epoch milliseconds
bronto monitors mute "High 5xx rate on checkout" --unmute

--until -1, the default, mutes indefinitely. Any other --until must be a future time in epoch milliseconds, and --unmute can’t be combined with --until: the command refuses either mistake with exit code 2. With --dry-run it prints the request it would send, with the monitor’s name resolved to its id:

$ bronto monitors mute "High 5xx rate on checkout" --dry-run
{
  "body": {
    "mute_until": -1
  },
  "dry_run": true,
  "method": "POST",
  "path": "/monitors/a1f3c9d2-4b6e-4f81-9c2d-7e5b3a8f1c01/status"
}

​

Downtimes and templates

Downtimes schedule planned quiet periods. They support list, create, update, and delete, and resolve by id or name. A downtime needs a name, a description, the monitor ids it silences in from, and either a static_time_range (epoch milliseconds) or a recurring dynamic_time_range:

bronto monitors downtimes list
bronto monitors downtimes create -f name=deploy -f description="Friday deploy" \
  -f 'from=["<monitor-id>"]' -f 'static_time_range={"from":<start-ms>,"to":<end-ms>}'
bronto monitors downtimes create --input downtime.json

bronto monitors downtimes update replaces the whole downtime, so pass all of these fields again.

Monitor templates have the full set of verbs under bronto monitors templates. In a template create body, threshold is a string (-f 'threshold="1000"'); see bronto monitors templates create --help for the other required fields.

Monitor updates replace the whole monitor too: bronto monitors update needs the full body, so keep it in a file and pass it with --input.

​

Lint monitor definitions in CI

If you keep monitor definitions as JSON in a repository, bronto monitors check validates them before you apply them. It checks query syntax, window bounds, and that the referenced datasets exist. On any problem it exits 1 with monitor_check_failed:

bronto monitors check --input monitors/checkout-5xx.json --input monitors/payments-p95.json

--input is repeatable and takes - for stdin. Run monitors check in CI before bronto monitors create --input <file> so a broken definition fails the build instead of being created.

​

Dashboards and widgets

Dashboards are built from widgets. Create the widgets first, then attach them to a dashboard. The API reference covers dashboards and widgets.

$ bronto dashboards list
NAME               DESCRIPTION                                                 CREATED     ID
Checkout overview  Request rate, 5xx errors and latency for the checkout flow  2026-05-04  d4c6e2b5-7e91-42b4-af50-1b8e6d3c4f04
$ bronto dashboards get "Checkout overview"
{
  "description": "Request rate, 5xx errors and latency for the checkout flow",
  "id": "d4c6e2b5-7e91-42b4-af50-1b8e6d3c4f04",
  "metadata": {
    "created_at": 1777890000000,
    "created_by": "[e-mail]",
    "modified_at": 1781023500000,
    "modified_by": "[e-mail]"
  },
  "name": "Checkout overview",
  "tags": {
    "team": "checkout"
  },
  "widget_ids": [
    "3e5a7c9b-1d2f-4e6a-8b0c-2d4f6a8c0e11",
    "4f6b8d0c-2e3a-4f7b-9c1d-3e5a7b9d1f12",
    "5a7c9e1d-3f4b-4a8c-8d2e-4f6b8c0e2a13"
  ]
}

widgets create and widgets update both require name and type, and update replaces the whole widget. Pass metric_ids, widget_ids, or aux as JSON values with -f, or put the whole body in a file:

bronto widgets create --input widget.json

Then attach, remove, or detach:

bronto dashboards attach-widgets "Checkout overview" --widget-ids <widget>,<widget>
bronto dashboards remove-widget "Checkout overview" <widget>
bronto dashboards detach-from-template "Checkout overview"

• bronto dashboards attach-widgets adds widgets by id or unique name. --widget-ids takes a comma-separated list or can be repeated.
• bronto dashboards remove-widget takes the dashboard and one widget.
• bronto dashboards detach-from-template unlinks a dashboard created from a template, and prints the updated dashboard.

Widgets can contain other widgets. bronto widgets attach-widgets and bronto widgets remove-widget work the same way, with a parent widget in place of the dashboard:

bronto widgets attach-widgets <parent-widget> --widget-ids <widget>
bronto widgets remove-widget <parent-widget> <widget>

The dashboard, parent widget, and widgets can each be an id or a unique name. All of these commands support --dry-run.

bronto dashboards update needs name (or a layout), and ignores a description.