What’s New in InfluxDB 3.6: Ask AI, Simple Quick Start, and Smarter Automation

By Peter Barnett / Product, Developer
Oct 30, 2025

InfluxDB 3.6 is now available for both Core and Enterprise. This release introduces the 1.4 update to InfluxDB 3 Explorer, featuring the beta launch of Ask AI, along with new capabilities for simple startup and expanded functionality in the Processing Engine.

InfluxDB 3 Core is free and open source, optimized for recent data, and licensed under MIT and Apache 2. InfluxDB 3 Enterprise extends Core with long-term data retention, clustering, fine-grained security, and management capabilities.

Ask AI now in beta for InfluxDB 3 Explorer

Version 1.4 of our Explorer UI includes Ask AI, a new beta feature that brings natural language to time series analysis. Plug in your API key, and Ask AI lets you query your data, documentation, and system operations conversationally, with no SQL required.

You can say, “show CPU usage by region over the last hour” or “give me a chart of average temperature this week,” and InfluxDB will return the results you need in the format you want. Ask AI can also perform operational tasks like creating databases, generating tokens, or adjusting settings, all with a single prompt.

Ask AI lowers the barrier for new users and keeps advanced users fast and productive. It’s available now in beta through Explorer 1.4 for both Core and Enterprise.

Shareable dashboards

Explorer 1.4 also adds support for importing and exporting dashboards. You can now share dashboards between environments or move them between Explorer and Grafana using compatible JSON files. This makes it easier to standardize visualizations, collaborate across teams, and back up your dashboards with version control.

Quick start

InfluxDB 3.6 can now start by simply running influxdb3. For development or local environments, you no longer need to configure instance or storage information before running the database. IDs and data directories are created automatically, lowering initialization complexity, so you can get started in just a few seconds after download completes.

Quick Start is for developers who want to test or prototype InfluxDB without setup overhead, or want to run in a simple local environment. Environment variables and CLI flags still override defaults, so production deployments remain fully explicit and configurable. This makes it easy to switch from local testing to production without changing workflows.

A major Processing Engine upgrade

The Processing Engine in InfluxDB 3 Enterprise enables you to execute custom Python code within the database to automate workflows, transform data, and create API endpoints. InfluxDB 3.6 expands the Processing Engine into a full extensibility layer. It now supports multifile Python plugins, direct uploads and updates, built-in observability, and tighter security controls.

Plugins can now include multiple files organized as proper Python modules, making code easier to maintain and reuse, with support for both single-file and directory-based plugins. Plugins can be uploaded or updated directly from your local environment without manual file transfers or server restarts, so users can iterate faster on complex data processing logic. All active plugins will continue to work without changes, with full backward compatibility.

To make management more transparent, InfluxDB now exposes all plugin files through a new plugin files table and a corresponding CLI command. Administrators can monitor which plugins are loaded, their size, and when they were last modified.

For production environments, new controls manage extensibility and governance together. Custom plugin repositories let organizations define trusted sources for plugins, while package management can now be fully disabled in locked-down environments, ensuring compliance without losing flexibility.

Get started

InfluxDB 3.6 is available now. To get started, download the latest version or pull the latest Docker image for Core or Enterprise.

Ask AI (Beta) is now available in Explorer 1.4. Try it in your environment and share feedback as we expand its capabilities.

Check out the docs (Core, Enterprise) for details, and let us know what you think in Discord or the Community Slack. Your feedback helps shape where we go next.