Loki Labels Reference ¶

In Grafana Loki, each log stream is identified by a small set of indexed labels. Additional context is attached to individual log lines as structured metadata. Both can be used to filter logs in LogQL queries, but only indexed labels belong inside the stream selector {…}.

Indexed labels ¶

Indexed labels form the stream selector and are the only labels you should place inside the curly braces {…} of a LogQL query. In Nais, only the following labels are indexed:

Example stream selector using indexed labels only:

{service_name="my-app", service_namespace="my-team", k8s_cluster_name="prod-gcp"}

Structured metadata ¶

Everything else is attached to each log line as structured metadata rather than being indexed. Structured metadata is fully filterable, but it must not be placed inside the stream selector {…}. Instead, filter on it later in the pipeline with a label-filter expression:

{service_name="my-app"} | detected_level="error"