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Perses

Perses is an open-source observability (dashboards and visualization) project that provides a composable, GitOps-friendly dashboarding system for time-series and monitoring

data.

  • Dashboarding and visualization for observability data (observability)
  • GitOps-compatible dashboard definitions as code using declarative resources (infrastructure as code)
  • Support for multiple data sources via an extensible plugin model (data integration)
  • Web-based user interface for creating, editing, and viewing dashboards (dashboard UI)
  • CNCF sandbox project under the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (open-source governance)

More About Perses

Perses is an open-source dashboard and visualization project (observability) focused on providing a composable and declarative way to define and manage dashboards for time-series and monitoring data. It targets cloud-native and infrastructure teams that want to manage dashboards similarly to other infrastructure resources, using configuration files, version control, and Git-centric workflows.

The project defines dashboards, panels, and related entities as declarative resources (infrastructure as code), enabling teams to store these objects in Git repositories, review them with standard code workflows, and apply them to environments through automation. This GitOps-friendly approach supports reproducible dashboard configurations across development, staging, and production, and helps align dashboard lifecycle management with broader platform and infrastructure delivery practices.

Perses provides a web-based user interface (dashboard UI) built to create, edit, and visualize dashboards that consume data from observability backends. Its visualization model supports charts and panels that display metrics and monitoring data, and it is designed to connect to multiple data sources (data integration) through an extensible plugin system. This allows organizations to integrate Perses into existing observability stacks rather than requiring a single backend.

The project’s architecture separates the core dashboard model from data source implementations (observability platform integration), so that additional backends can be supported through extensions without altering the central dashboard definitions. Dashboards are represented as structured resources, typically in formats suitable for version control, enabling tooling, validation, and automation around these artifacts.

In enterprise environments, Perses can function as part of a cloud-native Observability Platform (OP), providing a dashboarding layer that aligns with GitOps practices and standardized configuration management. Platform and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) teams can use Perses to maintain consistent dashboards across clusters, regions, or business units, while enabling local customization within a governed model. Its focus on openness and CNCF governance (open-source foundation) positions it for integration into Kubernetes-based and cloud-native architectures where interoperability and vendor-neutral tooling are priorities.

Within a technical directory or taxonomy, Perses fits into observability and monitoring (dashboards and visualization), infrastructure as code (declarative dashboard resources), and cloud-native tooling (CNCF project). It is relevant to enterprise architects, platform engineers, SREs, and operations teams who need a dashboard system that can be managed programmatically and integrated into automated delivery pipelines.