victoriametrics-query

VictoriaMetrics Metrics Query

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Install skill "victoriametrics-query" with this command: npx skills add victoriametrics/skills/victoriametrics-skills-victoriametrics-query

VictoriaMetrics Metrics Query

Query VictoriaMetrics HTTP API directly via curl. Covers instant/range queries, label/series discovery, alerts, rules, instance diagnostics, raw data export, metric usage statistics, and config debugging tools.

Environment

$VM_METRICS_URL - base URL

cluster: export VM_METRICS_URL="https://vmselect.example.com/select/0/prometheus"

single: export VM_METRICS_URL="http://localhost:8428"

$VM_AUTH_HEADER - auth header (set for prod, empty for local)

Auth Pattern

All curl commands use conditional auth — works for both prod and local:

curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/query?query=up" | jq .

When VM_AUTH_HEADER is empty, -H flag is omitted automatically.

Core Endpoints

Instant Query

Query at current time

curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"}
"$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/query?query=up" | jq .

Query at specific time

curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"}
"$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/query?query=up&time=2026-03-07T09:00:00Z" | jq .

Parameters: query (required), time (optional, RFC3339 or Unix seconds), step , timeout

Range Query

curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"}
"$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/query_range?query=rate(http_requests_total[5m])&start=2026-03-07T00:00:00Z&end=2026-03-07T12:00:00Z&step=5m" | jq .

Parameters: query (required), start (required), end (optional), step (required). Times in RFC3339 or Unix seconds.

Labels Discovery

All label names

curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"}
"$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/labels" | jq '.data[]'

Label values (label_name is a PATH parameter)

curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"}
"$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/label/namespace/values" | jq '.data[]'

Label values filtered by series matcher

curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"}
--data-urlencode 'match[]={job="kubelet"}'
"$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/label/namespace/values" | jq '.data[]'

Series Discovery

Find series matching selector

curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"}
--data-urlencode 'match[]={namespace="myapp"}'
"$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/series?limit=20" | jq '.data[].name'

Parameters: match[] (required), start , end , limit

Metric Metadata

Search by metric name keyword

curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"}
"$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/metadata?metric=http_request&limit=10" | jq .

Parameters: metric (search keyword), limit .

Alerts and Rules

All firing/pending alerts

curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"}
"$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/alerts" | jq '.data.alerts[]'

All alerting and recording rules

curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"}
"$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/rules" | jq '.data.groups[]'

Instance Diagnostics

TSDB cardinality stats

curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"}
"$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/status/tsdb" | jq .

Currently executing queries

curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"}
"$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/status/active_queries" | jq .

Most frequent/slowest queries

curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"}
"$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/status/top_queries?topN=10" | jq .

Version info

curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"}
"$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/status/buildinfo" | jq .

Export Raw Data

Export raw samples as JSON lines (one JSON object per line)

curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"}
--data-urlencode 'match[]=http_requests_total'
-d 'start=2026-03-07T00:00:00Z' -d 'end=2026-03-07T12:00:00Z'
"$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/export" | head -5

Export with reduced memory usage (for large exports)

curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"}
--data-urlencode 'match[]={namespace="myapp"}'
-d 'start=2026-03-07T00:00:00Z' -d 'end=2026-03-07T01:00:00Z'
-d 'reduce_mem_usage=1'
"$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/export" > export.jsonl

Parameters: match[] (required), start , end , reduce_mem_usage . Output is JSON lines (not wrapped in a standard API response).

Each line: {"metric":{"name":"...","label":"value"},"values":[...],"timestamps":[...]}

Also available: /api/v1/export/csv (CSV format), /api/v1/export/native (binary, for import via /api/v1/import/native ).

Series Count

Total number of active time series

curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"}
"$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/series/count" | jq .

Note: can be slow on large databases and may return slightly inflated values.

Metric Usage Statistics

Which metrics are being queried, and how often

curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"}
"$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/status/metric_names_stats?limit=20" | jq .

Metrics queried <= N times (find unused/rarely-used metrics)

curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"}
"$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/status/metric_names_stats?limit=50&le=1" | jq .

Filter by metric name pattern

curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"}
"$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/status/metric_names_stats?match_pattern=vm_&limit=20" | jq .

Parameters: limit (max results), le (max query count threshold — find metrics queried at most N times), match_pattern (metric name prefix filter).

Flags (Non-Default)

View non-default runtime flags (returns plain text, one flag per line — NOT JSON)

curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"}
"${VM_METRICS_URL%%/select/*}/flags"

Root-level endpoint. Returns plain text (not JSON), one flag per line. Shows only flags that differ from defaults — useful for debugging configuration.

Query Tools

These are ROOT-level endpoints, NOT under /api/v1/ . On cluster mode, strip the /select/0/prometheus prefix to get the base host.

Expand WITH expressions (returns text, not JSON)

curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"}
"${VM_METRICS_URL%%/select/*}/expand-with-exprs?query=WITH(x=up)x"

Prettify MetricsQL query (returns JSON)

curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"}
"${VM_METRICS_URL%%/select/*}/prettify-query?query=rate(x[5m])" | jq .

Note: ${VM_METRICS_URL%%/select/*} strips everything from /select onward, yielding the base host. On single-node (local), VM_METRICS_URL has no /select prefix so it returns the URL unchanged.

Config Debug Tools

Root-level endpoints for debugging relabeling, downsampling, and retention configurations. These accept POST with form data. Primarily used via VMUI but accessible via curl.

Debug metric relabeling rules — test how a metric is transformed

curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"}
-d 'metric=foo{bar="baz"}'
-d 'relabel_config=- target_label: cluster replacement: dev'
"${VM_METRICS_URL%%/select/*}/metric-relabel-debug"

Debug downsampling filters — test which downsampling rules match a metric

curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"}
-d 'metric=foo{bar="baz"}'
-d 'downsampling_period=30d:5m,180d:1h'
"${VM_METRICS_URL%%/select/*}/downsampling-filters-debug"

Debug retention filters — test which retention policy applies to a metric

curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"}
-d 'metric=foo{bar="baz"}'
-d 'retention_period=2y,{env="dev"}:30d'
"${VM_METRICS_URL%%/select/*}/retention-filters-debug"

These return HTML by default. For programmatic use, the VMUI at ${VM_METRICS_URL%%/select/*}/vmui/#/relabeling provides an interactive interface.

Timestamp Format

All times accept RFC3339 (2026-03-07T09:00:00Z ) or Unix seconds (1709769600 ). Default time for instant queries is "now". Default end for range queries is "now".

Response Parsing (jq)

Extract metric values from instant query

... | jq '.data.result[] | {metric: .metric.name, value: .value[1]}'

Extract time series from range query

... | jq '.data.result[] | {metric: .metric, values: [.values[] | {time: .[0], value: .[1]}]}'

List metric names from series response

... | jq '[.data[] | .name] | unique'

Count alerts by state

... | jq '.data.alerts | group_by(.state) | map({state: .[0].state, count: length})'

Top series by cardinality from tsdb status

... | jq '.data.seriesCountByMetricName[:10]'

Common Patterns

Check if a metric exists

curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"}
"$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/query?query=count({name=~"http_request.*"})" | jq '.data.result[].value[1]'

Get all namespaces with active pods

curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"}
--data-urlencode 'match[]={name="kube_pod_info"}'
"$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/label/namespace/values" | jq '.data[]'

Rate of errors over last hour

curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"}
--data-urlencode 'query=sum(rate(http_requests_total{code=~"5.."}[5m])) by (namespace)'
"$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/query" | jq '.data.result[] | {ns: .metric.namespace, rate: .value[1]}'

Environment Switching

Check current environment

echo "VM_METRICS_URL: $VM_METRICS_URL" echo "VM_AUTH_HEADER: $( [ -n "$VM_AUTH_HEADER" ] && echo '(set)' || echo '(empty)' )"

Important Notes

  • POST endpoints accept application/x-www-form-urlencoded (use --data-urlencode for query params with special chars)

  • match[] parameter requires the [] suffix — match alone won't work

  • For metric metadata, raw API uses metric param

  • label_values uses a path parameter: /api/v1/label/{label_name}/values

  • expand-with-exprs , prettify-query , flags , metric-relabel-debug , downsampling-filters-debug , and retention-filters-debug are root-level paths, not under /api/v1/

  • Export endpoint (/api/v1/export ) returns JSON lines (one object per line), not standard API response JSON

  • Debug endpoints (metric-relabel-debug , etc.) return HTML by default — best used via VMUI for interactive debugging

  • For full endpoint details, parameters, and response formats, see references/api-reference.md

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