---
title: "Prerequisites | Grafana Labs"
description: "Grafana Cloud, Assistant, a supported data source that's receiving data from a service, and permission to use Watchers."
---

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

# Prerequisites

To complete the hands-on learning path in this journey, you need the following.

| Requirement                                                                                       | Why you need it                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               |
|---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| **Grafana Cloud account** ([Create an account](https://grafana.com/signup/cloud/connect-account)) | Watchers need a Grafana Cloud stack.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          |
| **Grafana Assistant enabled**                                                                     | Watchers are an Assistant capability. Accept any required Assistant terms. Assistant is billed based on usage, and each watcher run uses tokens from your plan’s allowance. Refer to [Understand Grafana Assistant pricing and usage](https://grafana.com/docs/grafana-cloud/platform/grafana-assistant/pricing/).                                                                                            |
| **A supported data source that’s receiving data from a service**                                  | Watchers support Prometheus, Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus, Loki, BigQuery, Infinity, CloudWatch, Synthetic Monitoring, Tempo, and Pyroscope data sources that you can read and query. Assistant builds the watcher’s checks from that data, so pick a service that’s sending data now. Data sources that limit what each team can see with label-based access control (LBAC) rules aren’t supported. |
| **Permission to use Watchers**                                                                    | You need permission to view, create, and run watchers. The **Assistant User** role includes Watchers. If you don’t have access, ask your Grafana administrator.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               |

## Complete setup first

If Assistant isn’t enabled on your stack, follow [Set up Grafana Assistant in Grafana Cloud](https://grafana.com/docs/grafana-cloud/platform/grafana-assistant/get-started/grafana-cloud/). On some stacks, an administrator must enable it.

For the exact permissions each Watchers action needs, refer to [Manage Assistant access with RBAC](https://grafana.com/docs/grafana-cloud/platform/grafana-assistant/privacy-and-security/rbac/).