Text Panel Type - Add Markdown Notes to Dashboards

Text

The Text panel renders Markdown you write, in place, on the dashboard. It runs no query, so there is no query builder, no signal to pick, no dependence on the dashboard's time range, and nothing to load. It shows the body you authored.

Use it for the parts of a dashboard that explain the charts rather than draw them:

• Section headers that say what the panels below mean.
• Runbook or on-call steps next to the panels they apply to ("if p99 > 2s, do this").
• Links out to a service's repo, RCA doc, Slack channel, or another dashboard.
• A checklist an on-call engineer ticks off during an incident. Ticks are saved to the dashboard, see Task lists.
• Ownership and "last reviewed" notes, or caveats about the data.

Add a Text panel

1. On a dashboard, click New Panel and pick Text.
2. Write your Markdown in the editor. The preview above it updates as you type, so there is no Run step.
3. Set the title, alignment, background, and header options in the right-hand configuration pane.
4. Click Save changes.

You can also switch an existing panel to Text (and back) from Visualization → Panel Type in the configuration pane, the same as any other panel type.

The Markdown editor

The toolbar has buttons for Heading, Bold, Italic, Bulleted list, Numbered list, Link, Code, and Table. Each one wraps or inserts around the current selection.

The status bar shows the cursor position and a character count. The editor counts the body against a 16,000 character limit, since the Markdown is stored inline in the dashboard JSON.

Pressing Tab moves focus out of the editor instead of indenting, which keeps the panel editor navigable by keyboard.

Markdown syntax help

The ? button next to Insert variable opens a cheat sheet of the supported syntax.

Its first entry is the one authors trip over most: two consecutive lines join into a single paragraph. Leave a blank line to start a new paragraph, or end a line with two spaces to force a line break.

Supported Markdown

The panel supports CommonMark plus GitHub Flavored Markdown (GFM).

Fenced code blocks are highlighted for bash (sh, shell), css, diff, docker (dockerfile), go, java, javascript (js), json, markup (html, xml), python (py), rust, sql, typescript (ts), and yaml (yml). A fence with no language, or one the panel does not recognize, renders as plain monospace rather than an error.

Every fenced code block gets a copy button, which appears when you hover the block.

Dashboard variables

Variables are substituted into the body before it renders, so a Text panel can say "Runbook for $service in $environment" and follow the dashboard's current selection.

All four variable syntaxes work: $name, {{name}}, {{.name}}, and [[name]]. $name is the canonical form and the one Insert variable writes.

A few details worth knowing:

• $name matches dotted names such as $service.name. A trailing period is treated as prose, so $service. renders the value followed by a period.
• Macros prefixed with $__, such as $__step_interval, are not substituted.
• A multi-value variable joins its values with , .
• An undefined variable is left as literal text, the same as in queries.
• The substituted value becomes Markdown content, never markup, so a value coming from telemetry cannot inject formatting or links.

Text panels are included in the dashboard's variable usage view, so deleting or renaming a variable flags the Text panels that mention it.

Behavior on the dashboard

Task lists

Task list checkboxes are clickable on the dashboard itself and in the panel's View modal. Ticking one rewrites the saved Markdown and persists it to the dashboard. The tick applies instantly and rolls back with an error if the save fails.

Panel actions

Download (CSV, PNG, SVG), Create alert, Search, and Drilldown are deliberately absent. There is no data behind the panel, and the body is already in its readable form.

Other details

• A "Scroll for more" pill appears at the bottom when the body is taller than the panel.
• An empty body shows "Nothing written yet. Add Markdown to this panel to show content."
• Malformed Markdown never errors. It renders as literal text.

Panel options

A Text panel shows only the options that mean something without data. There are no thresholds, legend, axes, units, decimals, or context links.

Panel Details

• Title and Description, as on any panel.
• Hide header drops the title strip. With the header hidden, the drag handle and actions menu appear on hover instead. Pair it with a transparent background for a bare section title.

Visualization

• Panel Type switches this panel to another type.

Panel appearance

• Horizontal alignment: Left (default), Center, or Right.
• Vertical alignment: Top (default), Middle, or Bottom.
• Background: a row of swatches.
  • Transparent removes the card, border, and title bar, so the text sits directly on the dashboard. Good for section headers.
  • Default panel is the normal panel surface.
  • Eight presets: Robin, Purple, Sakura, Cherry, Amber, Forest, Sienna, and Slate. Each preset pairs a surface color with a text color, defined separately for light and dark mode, and every pair clears a 4.5:1 contrast ratio. A panel saved in dark mode shows the same preset in its light colors in light mode, with no re-save.
  • Custom takes any hex color (#rgb, #rgba, #rrggbb, #rrggbbaa). The text color is chosen automatically for contrast against whatever you pick.

JSON reference

The panel plugin kind is signoz/TextPanel.

{
  "kind": "signoz/TextPanel",
  "spec": {
    "mode": "markdown",
    "text": "## Checkout runbook\n\nOwner: @payments\n\n- [ ] Check $service error rate\n- [ ] Page the on-call",
    "presentation": {
      "textAlign": "left",
      "verticalAlign": "top",
      "background": "#24356E"
    },
    "headerOptions": { "hide": false }
  }
}

Get Help

If you need help with the steps in this topic, please reach out to us on SigNoz Community Slack. If you are a SigNoz Cloud user, please use in product chat support located at the bottom right corner of your SigNoz instance or contact us at cloud-support@signoz.io.