k6

k6 is Grafana's load-testing CLI for writing performance tests in JavaScript and running them locally or in Grafana Cloud. It covers API, protocol, and browser journeys while collecting thresholds, summaries, and exportable metrics.

• Run repeatable load tests for HTTP APIs, gRPC services, WebSockets, and browser flows from versioned JavaScript scripts.
• Inspect effective options, dependency requirements, and execution requirements before a run, then archive a self-contained test for CI or remote execution.
• Export summaries and metrics to JSON files or external backends such as OpenTelemetry, Prometheus Remote Write, InfluxDB, and Grafana Cloud.

• Core workflows are non-interactive and scriptable, so agents can inspect a test, run it with explicit flags, and gate follow-up actions on thresholds or exported metrics.
• Machine-readable paths are real: k6 inspect returns JSON, k6 deps --json lists imports and build requirements, --summary-export writes JSON, and -o json streams newline-delimited metrics.
• Project-level MCP support exists through the separate experimental mcp-k6 server documented by Grafana, but the main k6 binary remains the primary action surface.

• Writing useful tests still requires domain knowledge about traffic shape, thresholds, and environments; k6 measures behavior but does not explain regressions on its own.
• Browser scenarios and cloud runs add heavier setup, including local browser dependencies or Grafana Cloud authentication.