K6 Manage

Grafana Cloud k6 — interaction reference

The default path is the gcx CLI. When gcx isn't installed, every endpoint here is still reachable via direct curl against k6's public hosts — see §1.2 for the auth-header and host-translation rules. Two principles shape the rest:

• gcx owns Grafana-side auth (when present). It injects the right headers on every call, so you should not set auth headers yourself. The only header you ever set by hand is X-K6TestRun-Id, on Loki log queries (§4), browser screenshot/file fetches (§6), and Tempo trace queries (§7) — anything else gets overwritten or causes conflicts. In curl mode the auth headers are manual; see §1.2.
• Reach for gcx k6 ... subcommands first. They wrap the common paths with friendlier ergonomics and handle pagination. Discover what's available with gcx help-tree k6 (and drill in further with gcx help-tree k6 <subcommand>); fall back to gcx api only when no subcommand exists for what you need.

1. Authentication

1.1 With gcx (default)

gcx login --context <ctx>                # one-time OAuth, browser flow
gcx --context <ctx> config check         # expect "✔ Connectivity: online"

Once a context is logged in, every gcx api ... and gcx k6 ... call inherits its auth state. If a call returns "Invalid or expired token — run gcx login to refresh", the OAuth session has lapsed — re-run gcx login --context <ctx>.

1.2 Without gcx — direct curl

Check command -v gcx first. If it's missing, every endpoint in this skill is still reachable directly against k6's public hosts — three things change versus the gcx examples elsewhere:

• Auth headers are manual. Set both on every call:
  • Authorization: Bearer <k6_token>
  • X-Stack-ID: <int>
• Hosts replace the plugin proxy.
  • REST (/cloud/v6/..., /cloud/v5/..., /cloud-resources/v1/..., /insights/...) → https://api.k6.io
  • Logs (Loki) and traces (Tempo) → https://cloudlogs.k6.io
• No /api/plugins/k6-app/resources/{cloud,logs,insights} prefix. Drop it; everything after that prefix in the gcx examples is the real k6 path. The doubled cloud/cloud/ quirk from §2 collapses to a single /cloud/ — the first one was just the proxy route.

Obtaining the credentials

Don't guess these — prompt the user once per session for:

1. k6 API token — long-lived bearer; the same value gcx k6 auth token would print when gcx is configured.

2. Stack — either the integer stack ID (used directly in X-Stack-ID) or a Grafana stack URL (e.g. https://myorg.grafana.net). If the user supplies a URL, resolve it to an ID once with GET /cloud/v6/auth, which takes the URL in the X-Stack-Url header and returns {stack_id, default_project_id}:

   STACK_ID=$(curl -sS https://api.k6.io/cloud/v6/auth \
     -H "Authorization: Bearer $K6_TOKEN" \
     -H "X-Stack-Url: $STACK_URL" \
     | jq -r '.stack_id')
   

   Cache the resolved ID for the session — every subsequent call needs it in X-Stack-ID. (Note: /cloud/v6/auth is the only endpoint that takes X-Stack-Url instead of X-Stack-ID — it's how you cross the gap from "user-known URL" to "API-required ID".)

Translation cheat-sheet

In every -H ... slot above, send both auth headers: -H "Authorization: Bearer $K6_TOKEN" -H "X-Stack-ID: $STACK_ID".

Notes:

• Endpoint-specific headers gcx leaves to you — X-K6TestRun-Id on log, trace, and files endpoints (§4, §6, §7) — are still required in addition to the auth pair.
• The gcx api flag quirks in §2 (spill envelope, --json field filtering, -o for output format) don't apply to curl. Use plain curl flags: -o file to save body, --data-binary @file for PUT payloads, -w '%{http_code}' for status code, etc.
• Pagination semantics ($orderby, $top, $skip, @nextLink from §3) are properties of the v6 endpoints themselves and work identically over curl. The @nextLink URL returned by the server is already an absolute https://api.k6.io/... URL — pass it back to curl unchanged; the plugin-proxy reshape in §3 isn't needed.

2. How gcx api paths are shaped

When no subcommand exists, fall back to gcx api against the Grafana plugin-proxy routes:

• REST API (/cloud/v6/, /cloud/v5/) — prefix with /api/plugins/k6-app/resources/cloud/<k6-path>.
• Logs (Loki) — prefix with /api/plugins/k6-app/resources/logs/<loki-path>.

Note the doubled cloud/cloud/ in every REST path — the first cloud is the proxy route, the second is k6's /cloud/v{N}/ namespace.

gcx api flag quirks

gcx api is not a curl clone — a few flags differ from what curl muscle memory suggests:

• Response body is written to stdout. There is no -o <file> flag for saving the body; -o selects output format (json, yaml, agents). Use shell redirection (> file) or $(...) capture instead.

• Request body uses -d <string>, -d @file, or -d @- (stdin). There is no --data-binary; -d @file already preserves bytes.

• Field selection without jq: --json field1,field2,... returns only the listed fields, and --json list (or --json '?') discovers what's available. Often cleaner than piping into jq for shallow extractions.

• Stderr noise: gcx prints a one-line hint: to stderr on most invocations. Pipelines into jq should redirect with 2>/dev/null to avoid surprises.

• Response headers are not directly exposed by gcx api. When a branch in the workflow hinges on Content-Type (e.g. script GET in §5), inspect the downloaded body with file <path> instead.

• Large responses spill to a temp file, with stdout reduced to a wrapper envelope. The threshold is a few tens of KB, so even moderately-sized list endpoints trigger it. The envelope looks like this:

  {"spilled_to":"/var/folders/.../gcx-results-<n>.json",
   "bytes":2365037,
   "preview_sample":["@nextLink","value"],
   "message":"Response too large for stdout..."}
  

  Naive json.loads(stdout).get('value', []) patterns silently return empty in this case — the envelope has no value key. Two reliable fixes:

  • Pass -o json to force inline output regardless of size (recommended for scripts that parse the body). The agent-mode default formatting is what triggers the spill; -o json opts out.
  • Or detect the envelope and re-read from the spilled file:

    d = json.loads(stdout)
    if 'spilled_to' in d:
        d = json.load(open(d['spilled_to']))
    

  Either works; -o json is fewer lines.

• The Grafana plugin proxy rewrites Content-Type: multipart/... to application/json. gcx api itself forwards your -H "Content-Type: ..." header correctly (visible in --log-http-payload traces), but the upstream plugin proxy rewrites multipart Content-Types to JSON before they reach k6's API. The net effect: endpoints that require multipart bodies — notably POST /cloud/v6/projects/{id}/load_tests for test creation, which takes name + script as form parts — return HTTP 415 "Unsupported media type \"application/json\"" no matter what header you set on the gcx side. Fall back to direct curl against api.k6.io (§1.2) for these endpoints — curl -F name=... -F script=@... builds the multipart body for you and bypasses the plugin proxy. Other Content-Type values (e.g. application/octet-stream for the script-update PUT in §5) are forwarded through the proxy unchanged.

3. Discovering and calling endpoints

gcx k6 subcommands (see gcx help-tree k6) cover the common reads. For everything else — mutations, niche reads, endpoints not surfaced as subcommands — the k6 Cloud API surface is large and changes over time. Rather than rely on a cheat-sheet that goes stale, discover the operation you need from the OpenAPI spec at request time.

Workflow

1. Fetch the spec once per session (it's large; cache to /tmp):

   gcx api /api/plugins/k6-app/resources/cloud/cloud/v6/openapi > /tmp/k6-openapi.json
   

2. Index by operationId + description first — this keeps the working payload small while you search:

   jq '[.paths | to_entries[] | .key as $p | .value | to_entries[]
        | {path: $p, method: .key,
           operationId: .value.operationId,
           description: .value.description}]' /tmp/k6-openapi.json
   

   Grep this for the action you need ("abort", "limits", "schedule", …).

3. Pull the chosen operation's full schema — parameters, request body, response — resolving any $ref indirections:

   jq '.paths["<path>"]["<method>"]' /tmp/k6-openapi.json
   # Then for each "$ref": "#/components/schemas/Foo":
   jq '.components.schemas.Foo' /tmp/k6-openapi.json
   

4. Build the gcx api call against the same path, prefixed per §2. Authorization is already injected by gcx — do not add it yourself.

List requests

When the operation you're calling is a list endpoint, default to ordering by created descending (newest first) and paginating by 20 — both via whatever query parameter names the OpenAPI schema for that operation exposes. Names vary (ordering=-created, order_by=created.desc, sort=-created, limit=20, page_size=20), which is exactly why discovering them from the spec in step 3 matters. Newest-first means the entries the user usually cares about land in the first page; a page size of 20 keeps the response small enough to summarise without burning context.

Full enumeration: paginating with @nextLink

When you need to enumerate all rows (not just the newest page), the v6 list endpoints cap each response at 1000 rows (the default $top) and return an @nextLink field pointing at the next page. gcx k6 runs list --limit 0 does NOT auto-follow @nextLink and defaults to ascending order — for tests with >1000 historical runs it silently returns the oldest 1000, not the newest. The practical effect: (first/last_run) summarised from this output can be wildly stale (e.g. a daily-scheduled test that's been running for years will show a last_run from ~3 years ago). Use gcx api against the v6 endpoint with $orderby=created desc for the newest-first slice, or loop on @nextLink until it's absent for full enumeration.

The v6 list endpoints expose OData-style query parameters:

Two practical defaults for the loop: $orderby=created desc so the first page contains the newest runs (most of the time the agent only cares about those), and -o json to opt out of the spill envelope (see §2) so the parsing is uniform across pages.

import json, subprocess, urllib.parse

CTX = "<stack>"
TEST_ID = "<test_id>"
PROXY = "/api/plugins/k6-app/resources/cloud"

all_runs = []
# Start with newest first; -o json keeps the body inline for clean json.loads().
path = (
    f"{PROXY}/cloud/v6/load_tests/{TEST_ID}/test_runs"
    "?%24orderby=created%20desc&%24top=1000"
)
while path:
    r = subprocess.run(["gcx", "--context", CTX, "api", path, "-o", "json"],
                       capture_output=True, text=True, timeout=60)
    d = json.loads(r.stdout)
    all_runs.extend(d.get("value", []))
    nxt = d.get("@nextLink")
    if not nxt:
        path = None
        continue
    # @nextLink comes back as an absolute http://api.k6.io/... URL with
    # OData params already encoded ($skip, $top, $orderby). Reshape its
    # path+query into the plugin-proxy prefix:
    p = urllib.parse.urlparse(nxt)
    path = f"{PROXY}{p.path}" + (f"?{p.query}" if p.query else "")

Same pattern works for any v6 list endpoint that returns @nextLink, not just /test_runs. If you only need the few most-recent items, stop the loop after the first page — with $orderby=created desc that page is already the newest 1000.

Metrics

Time-series and aggregate metrics live on the v5 API (/cloud/v5/...) — Prometheus-like query semantics inside OData-style URL function-calls (query_range_k6(query='...',metric='...')), not captured by the v6 OpenAPI. The full endpoint reference, selector syntax, query methods per metric type, and worked examples are inlined in references/metrics.md — read that before constructing a metrics query.

Logs

See §4.

4. Logs (Loki via gcx api)

The plugin proxies Loki under /api/plugins/k6-app/resources/logs/. The only header you supply by hand is X-K6TestRun-Id; gcx handles authorization.

RUN_ID="<run_id>"

# Scope the log window to the run itself: `created` for start, `ended`
# for end. If `ended` is null the run is still in progress — fall back
# to "now". Use a wider hard-coded window only when the run object's
# timestamps don't fit what you're investigating.
RUN=$(gcx api /api/plugins/k6-app/resources/cloud/cloud/v6/test_runs/$RUN_ID 2>/dev/null)
# k6 emits sub-second precision (e.g. "...:58.984041Z"); jq's
# fromdateiso8601 only accepts whole seconds, so strip the fraction.
START=$(echo "$RUN" | jq -r '.created | sub("\\.[0-9]+Z$"; "Z") | fromdateiso8601')
END=$(echo "$RUN"   | jq -r 'if .ended then (.ended | sub("\\.[0-9]+Z$"; "Z") | fromdateiso8601) else (now | floor) end')

QUERY=$(printf '{test_run_id="%s"}' "$RUN_ID" | jq -sRr @uri)

# Save the raw response to /tmp/ — log payloads can be large; streaming
# them inline burns context. Summarise from the file, then jq into
# specific entries only when needed.
gcx api "/api/plugins/k6-app/resources/logs/api/v1/query_range?query=${QUERY}&direction=backward&start=${START}&end=${END}&limit=1000" \
  -H "X-K6TestRun-Id: $RUN_ID" 2>/dev/null > /tmp/run_${RUN_ID}_logs.json

# Tight summary — counts and stream labels only:
jq '{status, streams: (.data.result | length),
     total_entries: ([.data.result[].values | length] | add),
     stream_labels: [.data.result[].stream]}' /tmp/run_${RUN_ID}_logs.json

Pull individual entries from /tmp/run_${RUN_ID}_logs.json as needed (e.g. jq '.data.result[].values[]' …) rather than re-running the query.

Every LogQL query must include the {test_run_id="<run_id>"} stream selector — the plugin proxy partitions logs by run and rejects (or returns nothing for) queries without it. Layer additional filters on top of that selector:

• {test_run_id="<run_id>"} — everything
• {test_run_id="<run_id>"} | level=~"(error|warn)" — errors and warnings only
• {test_run_id="<run_id>"} |= "specific text" — substring filter

Direction & window tips:

• Scope start/end to the run's created/ended fields, not to wall-clock "last hour" — otherwise queries silently miss anything older than the window. The only reason to deviate is when you specifically want a different interval (e.g. surrounding context).
• direction=forward with start = run.created to find the first errors.
• direction=backward with end = run.ended (or now, if still running) to find the most recent output.
• Loki retention typically outlives k6's cascade-delete, so logs of a deleted child run may still be queryable for a while.

5. Editing a test script safely

Two distinct script endpoints

There are two GET endpoints that return a k6 script body, and they are not interchangeable:

The two can drift apart: if the load-test script is edited after a run completes, that run's bundled snapshot stays frozen at what it executed, while the load-test endpoint serves the new current version. The bundled-snapshot endpoint is GET-only — you cannot mutate historical bytes.

The safe-edit recipe below uses the load-test endpoint (the editable one). For run-vs-run script diffs (e.g. "did the script change between the last passing and first failing run?"), GET both runs' /test_runs/<id>/script and diff them locally.

Script body format

The script GET endpoint returns one of two shapes — always detect which before assuming the format:

• Single js/ts file. The recipe below handles this case directly.

• k6 tar archive (plain tar or gzipped). A multi-file project bundle (entry script + imported modules + assets). To edit: extract the JS file, modify it, then use k6 archive to rebuild the archive from the modified JS. Do not manually repack with tar — the archive contains a metadata.json with parsed options (projectID, thresholds, scenarios) that k6 archive regenerates correctly from the script source. Manual repacking preserves stale metadata and causes runtime errors (e.g. projectID mismatch).

  # Edit a k6 tar archive
  tar -xf /tmp/script_body -C /tmp/extracted/   # extract
  # ... edit the JS file ...
  k6 archive /tmp/edited_script.js -O /tmp/new_archive.tar  # rebuild
  

gcx api doesn't expose response headers (see §2), so detect the shape by inspecting the downloaded body with file(1):

gcx api /api/plugins/k6-app/resources/cloud/cloud/v6/load_tests/$ID/script \
  > /tmp/script_body
file /tmp/script_body
# Expected output (examples):
#   ASCII text          → js/ts source
#   POSIX tar archive   → k6 tar bundle
#   gzip compressed data → gzipped tar bundle

The PUT body must be the raw script (or archive) bytes (application/octet-stream). gcx forwards the request to k6 unchanged.

ID="<load_test_id>"

# 1. Pull current script (single-file js/ts case)
gcx api /api/plugins/k6-app/resources/cloud/cloud/v6/load_tests/$ID/script \
  > /tmp/script_current.js

# 2. Backup
cp /tmp/script_current.js /tmp/script_backup_$(date +%s).js

# 3. Edit → /tmp/script_new.js

# 4. Local parse-only sanity check
k6 inspect /tmp/script_new.js | head -20

# 5. 1-iteration smoke (edit IN-FILE; --iterations CLI flag breaks browser scenarios)
sed 's/iterations: [0-9]\+/iterations: 1/' /tmp/script_new.js > /tmp/script_1iter.js
k6 run --quiet /tmp/script_1iter.js   # exit 0 = pass, 99 = threshold fail

# 6. PUT — Content-Type must be application/octet-stream
gcx api /api/plugins/k6-app/resources/cloud/cloud/v6/load_tests/$ID/script \
  -X PUT \
  -H "Content-Type: application/octet-stream" \
  -d "@/tmp/script_new.js"

# 7. Verify by re-fetching and comparing sha256 — the two hashes MUST match.
#    Do not rely on the `updated` timestamp; it does not bump on script PUT.
gcx api /api/plugins/k6-app/resources/cloud/cloud/v6/load_tests/$ID/script \
  > /tmp/script_verify.js
shasum -a 256 /tmp/script_new.js /tmp/script_verify.js

If the PUT returns 415, double-check that -H "Content-Type: application/octet-stream" made it through (some shell quoting mistakes can drop it). Pass -vvv to gcx api for the request/response trace when debugging.

6. Browser screenshots

Browser-module runs write screenshot PNGs to per-run S3 storage — that's the only artifact type the files API surfaces today. They're not exposed via /cloud/v6/; retrieval goes through a separate cloud-resources/v1/files/ plugin route in a two-step flow. Both calls require the same X-K6TestRun-Id header used for log queries (§4) — gcx still handles auth, but the run ID must be supplied by hand or the endpoint rejects with HTTP 422.

RUN_ID="<run_id>"

# 1. Index — JSON array of screenshot paths owned by this run. Empty
#    array if the run took none (e.g. non-browser tests, or browser
#    runs that didn't call page.screenshot()).
gcx api /api/plugins/k6-app/resources/cloud/cloud-resources/v1/files/index \
  -H "X-K6TestRun-Id: $RUN_ID" -o json 2>/dev/null > /tmp/files_${RUN_ID}.json

# Each entry looks like:
#   "7542817/files/screenshots/screenshots/login-success.png"
# The doubled "screenshots/screenshots/" segment is real, not a typo —
# pass the path back unchanged to step 2.

# 2. Request pre-signed download URLs for the files you want. The
#    request body must be JSON; Content-Type matters.
FILES=$(jq -c '[.[] | {name: .}]' /tmp/files_${RUN_ID}.json)
PAYLOAD=$(jq -nc --argjson files "$FILES" \
  '{service:"aws_s3", operation:"download", files:$files}')

gcx api /api/plugins/k6-app/resources/cloud/cloud-resources/v1/files/generate-pre-signed-url \
  -X POST \
  -H "X-K6TestRun-Id: $RUN_ID" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d "$PAYLOAD" -o json 2>/dev/null > /tmp/presigned_${RUN_ID}.json

# 3. Download each pre-signed URL directly — they're plain S3 GETs, no
#    gcx and no auth header (the signature is in the URL). The URLs
#    are valid for 24h (X-Amz-Expires=86400); re-run step 2 if they
#    expire.
mkdir -p /tmp/run_${RUN_ID}_files
jq -r '.urls[] | [.name, .pre_signed_url] | @tsv' /tmp/presigned_${RUN_ID}.json |
  while IFS=$'\t' read -r NAME URL; do
    curl -sS -o "/tmp/run_${RUN_ID}_files/$(basename "$NAME")" "$URL"
  done

Notes worth knowing

• Index before signing. generate-pre-signed-url does not validate that the file exists — it will happily mint a URL for any key, and the 404 only surfaces when you try to download (S3 returns <Error><Code>NoSuchKey</Code>...). Always derive the file list from files/index, not from a guess at the path shape.
• Batch the sign request. files is an array, so request all the URLs you need in one POST rather than one call per file — same 24h expiry covers the whole batch.
• Browser tests vs. protocol tests. Only runs that called page.screenshot() have entries in the index; a pure protocol/HTTP run will return []. Don't assume the index is non-empty.

7. Browser traces (Tempo via gcx api)

Browser-module runs emit OTel spans for every iteration, navigation, locator click, screenshot, web-vital observation, etc. The plugin proxies a Tempo backend under /api/plugins/k6-app/resources/logs/ (same prefix as Loki — see §4), and the same X-K6TestRun-Id header is required on every call. Without it, both search and fetch return HTTP 401 "Test run ID missing".

Retrieval is a two-step flow: TraceQL search → fetch full trace by ID. The full trace is large (≈100 KB on disk for a 120-span iteration because -o json pretty-prints; ~50 KB compact), so the join+summarise step is what keeps agent context lean.

RUN_ID="<run_id>"

# 1. Find the run's start/end window and pick the scenario name.
#    Same caveat as §4: strip the sub-second fraction before
#    fromdateiso8601, and fall back to "now" if the run is still
#    running. Add a small buffer because spans can land slightly
#    after the run object reports `ended`.
RUN=$(gcx api /api/plugins/k6-app/resources/cloud/cloud/v6/test_runs/$RUN_ID 2>/dev/null)
START=$(echo "$RUN" | jq -r '.created | sub("\\.[0-9]+Z$"; "Z") | fromdateiso8601')
END=$(  echo "$RUN" | jq -r 'if .ended then (.ended | sub("\\.[0-9]+Z$"; "Z") | fromdateiso8601) else (now|floor) end')
START=$((START - 60))
END=$((END + 60))

SCENARIO="ui"  # whatever your scenario is named; check run.ui.exec / k6 script

# 2. Search for iteration root spans. TraceQL goes in `q`; URL-encode
#    it. `start`/`end` must be unix seconds — RFC3339 returns
#    HTTP 400 `invalid start: strconv.ParseUint`. limit=500 caps the
#    result, enough to cover several thousand iterations.
Q=$(printf '{ name = "iteration" && span.test.iteration.number >= 0 && span.test.vu >= 0 && span.test.scenario = "%s" }' "$SCENARIO")
QE=$(printf '%s' "$Q" | jq -sRr @uri)

gcx api "/api/plugins/k6-app/resources/logs/api/v1/tempo/api/search?start=${START}&end=${END}&q=${QE}&limit=500" \
  -H "X-K6TestRun-Id: $RUN_ID" -o json 2>/dev/null > /tmp/traces_${RUN_ID}.json

# Each entry has: traceID (32-char hex), rootServiceName ("k6"),
# rootTraceName ("iteration"), durationMs, startTimeUnixNano, and a
# spanSet preview of the iteration root span's attributes
# (test.iteration.number, test.vu, test.scenario).

# 3. Fetch a full trace. The response is OTLP-shaped:
#    { "batches": [ { "resource": {...}, "scopeSpans": [ { "spans": [...] } ] } ] }
TRACE_ID=$(jq -r '.traces[0].traceID' /tmp/traces_${RUN_ID}.json)
gcx api "/api/plugins/k6-app/resources/logs/api/v1/tempo/api/traces/$TRACE_ID" \
  -H "X-K6TestRun-Id: $RUN_ID" -o json 2>/dev/null > /tmp/trace_${TRACE_ID}.json

Compact summary for an agent

The OTLP body for a single iteration can run ~100 KB pretty-printed. Dumping it verbatim into context is wasteful — most of the useful signal lives in the span-name distribution, the slowest individual spans, and the web-vital ratings. The pipeline below collapses a trace into ~1–2 KB of plain text:

jq -r '
  # OTel value envelope: pick by key presence, not //-chaining — jq's //
  # treats `false` as missing and would drop legitimate boolValue:false.
  def attrval:
    if   has("stringValue") then .stringValue
    elif has("intValue")    then .intValue
    elif has("boolValue")   then .boolValue
    elif has("doubleValue") then .doubleValue
    else null end;
  def attrs: [.attributes[] | {(.key): (.value | attrval)}] | add // {};
  def dur:   (((.endTimeUnixNano|tonumber) - (.startTimeUnixNano|tonumber)) / 1000000 | floor);

  [.batches[].scopeSpans[].spans[] | {name, dur: dur, a: attrs, status: (.status.code // "OK")}] as $spans

  | "── span-name rollup (count · total ms · max ms) ──",
    ([$spans[] | {name, dur}]
       | group_by(.name) | map({name: .[0].name, n: length,
                                t: (map(.dur)|add), m: (map(.dur)|max)})
       | sort_by(-.t)[]
       | "  \(.n|tostring|.+"      "|.[0:4])  \(.t|tostring|.+"        "|.[0:7])  \(.m|tostring|.+"      "|.[0:6])  \(.name)"),

    "\n── slowest spans (ms · name · navigation.url / page.goto.url) ──",
    ([$spans[] | select(.name != "iteration")] | sort_by(-.dur) | .[0:8][]
       | "  \(.dur|tostring|.+"        "|.[0:7])  \(.name)\(if .a["navigation.url"] // .a["page.goto.url"] then "  " + (.a["navigation.url"] // .a["page.goto.url"]) else "" end)"),

    "\n── web-vital ratings ──",
    ([$spans[] | select(.name == "web_vital")
       | {n: .a["web_vital.name"], v: .a["web_vital.value"], r: .a["web_vital.rating"]}]
       | group_by(.n) | map({name: .[0].n,
                             ratings: ([.[].r] | group_by(.) | map({(.[0]): length}) | add)})[]
       | "  \(.name)  \(.ratings)"),

    "\n── span errors ──",
    ([$spans[] | select(.status != "OK" and .status != null)] | length | "  count: \(.)")
' /tmp/trace_${TRACE_ID}.json

On a run like 7542817 the output is something like:

── span-name rollup (count · total ms · max ms) ──
  1     154552   154552  iteration
  37    153391   17746   navigation
  11    21778    5168    page.waitForNavigation
  ...

── slowest spans (ms · name · navigation.url / page.goto.url) ──
  17746    navigation  https://k6e2etests.grafana-dev.net/a/k6-app/projects
  14992    navigation  https://k6e2etests.grafana-dev.net/a/k6-app/projects/58195
  ...

── web-vital ratings ──
  LCP   {"poor":5,"needs-improvement":1}
  CLS   {"good":2}
  ...

Two paragraphs of text capture which navigations are slow, which web vitals are regressing, and the overall span-name distribution — enough to reason about browser performance without paging through the OTLP tree.

Notes worth knowing

• Header is mandatory. Both /search and /traces/<id> return HTTP 401 without X-K6TestRun-Id. The header scopes the query to the run's tenant.
• start/end are unix seconds. RFC3339 ISO strings get HTTP 400 invalid start: strconv.ParseUint. They're technically optional — search works without them — but providing a window matching the run's created/ended (plus ~60s buffer) keeps the query fast and avoids matching unrelated runs that share the scenario name.
• TraceQL, not LogQL. The q parameter uses TraceQL — span predicates are written as span.<attribute> and combined with &&. The suggested query filters iteration root spans for a specific scenario; broaden by dropping test.scenario, narrow by adding e.g. span.test.vu = 3 && span.test.iteration.number = 5 to pinpoint a single iteration on a single VU.
• Scenario names come from the run. They're the keys of .options.scenarios on the run object — gcx api /api/plugins/k6-app/resources/cloud/cloud/v6/test_runs/$RUN_ID --json options 2>/dev/null | jq -r '.options.scenarios | keys[]' lists them. The default scenario is named default; browser tests often name it ui, browser, etc.
• Span IDs in the OTLP body are base64. The traceID in the search response is hex (the form /traces/<id> accepts); the inner traceId/spanId/parentSpanId fields inside the OTLP batch are base64-encoded bytes. Cross-correlate parent/child via parentSpanId == spanId, both in base64 — no need to decode.
• Useful attribute keys on browser-test spans: navigation.url, page.goto.url, screenshot.path, web_vital.name, web_vital.value, web_vital.rating, test.scenario, test.vu, test.iteration.number, k6.test_run_id. These are the ones worth surfacing in summaries; the OTel value envelope is {stringValue|intValue|boolValue|doubleValue} (the jq attrval helper above handles all four).

8. Cloud Insights (audit results for a run)

Cloud Insights runs heuristics against a finished test — checks for high cardinality, web-vital regressions, missing thresholds, overutilised load generators, and so on — and exposes the results through a separate /resources/insights/ plugin route (not /cloud/v{N}/). gcx still handles auth; no extra header is needed.

Three calls produce the data, and the agent-useful output is a join across two of them:

RUN_ID="<run_id>"
BASE="/api/plugins/k6-app/resources/insights/insights/api/v1/testrun/$RUN_ID"

# 1. List executions for the run, take the most recent. The response
#    is { "executions": [ {id, version}, ... ] } — NOT a bare array.
#    Pick the last entry; insights re-runs append, and the newest one
#    reflects the current set of audits/scores.
EXEC_ID=$(gcx api "$BASE/executions" -o json 2>/dev/null \
  | jq -r '.executions[-1].id')

# 2. Audit definitions (id, title, description, weight). ~15 items.
gcx api "$BASE/executions/$EXEC_ID/audits" -o json 2>/dev/null \
  > /tmp/insights_audits_${RUN_ID}.json

# 3. Audit results (audit_id, status, score, explanation, actions).
gcx api "$BASE/executions/$EXEC_ID/audits/results" -o json 2>/dev/null \
  > /tmp/insights_results_${RUN_ID}.json

Both responses use the same top-level key — audits — but the contents differ: step 2 is the catalog of what each audit checks, step 3 is what that audit found on this particular run. Cross-join them via result.audit_id == audit.id (1:1 in practice).

Joining into a compact, agent-readable summary

The raw audit + results JSON together is ~10 KB. Dumping both into context just to read out three lines per audit is wasteful — do the join in jq and emit a single tight block. The pipeline below is the recommended shape:

jq -nr \
  --slurpfile a /tmp/insights_audits_${RUN_ID}.json \
  --slurpfile r /tmp/insights_results_${RUN_ID}.json '
  ($a[0].audits | INDEX(.id)) as $defs
  | $r[0].audits
  | map({
      title:         ($defs[.audit_id].title // "?"),
      description:   ($defs[.audit_id].description // ""),
      status:        .status,
      status_reason: .status_reason,
      score: (
        if .score == null            then "n/a"
        elif .score.type == "binary" then (if .score.value then "pass" else "fail" end)
        else (.score.value | tostring)
        end),
      explanation: (.explanation // "" | gsub("\n+"; " ") | .[0:300]),
      actions:     (.actions // [])
    })
  | .[]
  | "── \(.title) — score: \(.score)\(if .status == "failed" then " [audit did not run: \(.status_reason // "unknown")]" else "" end)\n  \(.description)\n  → \(.explanation)\(if (.actions|length) > 0 then "\n  actions:\n    - " + (.actions|join("\n    - ")) else "" end)\n"
'

For a 15-audit run this emits ~5 KB of plain text — title, score, one-line description, one-line explanation, and any action items. That's enough for the agent to reason about the test's health without re-reading either JSON blob.

Notes worth knowing

• status ≠ verdict. status: "succeeded" means the audit executed. The verdict lives in score (binary true/false, or numeric 0…1 where 1 is best). status: "failed" means the audit itself could not run (typically status_reason: "missing data" — e.g. the HTTP Spans audit on a non-tracing test); the score field is absent. Treat these as "no signal", not as failures.
• Score thresholds vary per audit. A numeric 0.94 might be fine for one audit and concerning for another — there's no global cutoff. The explanation is authoritative for what the score means; surface it verbatim rather than inventing a pass/fail rule.
• actions is the actionable bit. Only present when the audit has concrete recommendations (e.g. "Reduce the cardinality of the url label …"). When summarising a run for a user who's trying to improve it, lead with audits that have a non-empty actions array.
• Pick the last execution, not the first. .executions[] is in chronological order; re-runs append. Older executions reflect older audit logic and may have stale results.
• Insights is a post-run analysis. If the run hasn't finished (or never produced enough data for insights to compute), the executions list may be empty — bail out gracefully on length == 0.

9. Local k6 CLI (smoke tests and k6 cloud run)

The local k6 CLI is the right tool for parse checks and 1-iteration smoke runs before pushing to cloud:

k6 inspect script.js | head -20      # parse-only sanity
k6 run --quiet script.js             # run locally

For k6 cloud run (uploads + runs in cloud from your laptop), authenticate k6 cloud login with the token and stack URL pulled from gcx — token comes from gcx k6 auth token, stack URL from the active gcx context's grafana.server field:

TOKEN=$(gcx --context <ctx> k6 auth token)
STACK=$(gcx --context <ctx> config view --minify -o json | jq -r '.contexts[].grafana.server')
k6 cloud login --token "$TOKEN" --stack "$STACK"
k6 cloud run script.js

k6's cloud config (~/.config/k6/cloud.json) is single-context, so re-run k6 cloud login whenever you switch gcx contexts — otherwise k6 cloud run will keep targeting the previous stack.

Exit codes: 0 pass, 99 threshold fail, anything else = script/runtime error.

10. Gotchas

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