dbt Agent Skills

dbt Agent Skills

A curated collection of Agent Skills for working with dbt. These skills help AI agents understand and execute dbt workflows more effectively.

What are Agent Skills?

Agent Skills are folders of instructions, scripts, and resources that agents can discover and use to do things more accurately and efficiently.

How They Work

These skills are not slash commands or user-invoked actions. Once installed, the agent automatically loads the relevant skill when your prompt matches its use case. Just describe what you need in natural language and the agent handles the rest. See skill invocation control for more details.

What's Included

• Analytics engineering: Build and modify dbt models, write tests, explore data sources
• Semantic layer: Create metrics, dimensions, and semantic models with MetricFlow
• dbt Mesh: Work with multi-project setups, cross-project refs, model governance (contracts, versions, access)
• Platform operations: Troubleshoot job failures, configure the dbt MCP server
• Migration: Move projects from dbt Core to dbt v2

Installation

Claude Code

Add the dbt skills marketplace and install the plugins:

# Add the marketplace
/plugin marketplace add dbt-labs/dbt-agent-skills

# Install the dbt skills (analytics engineering, semantic layer, testing, etc.)
/plugin install dbt@dbt-agent-marketplace

# Install the migration skills (typically a one-off — not needed for every session)
/plugin install dbt-migration@dbt-agent-marketplace

Other AI Clients

Vercel Skills CLI

Use the Vercel Skills CLI to install skills from this repository. Supports 30+ AI agents including Cursor, Cline, GitHub Copilot, and others.

# Preview available skills
npx skills add dbt-labs/dbt-agent-skills --list

# Install all skills
npx skills add dbt-labs/dbt-agent-skills

# Install only the dbt skills (analytics engineering, semantic layer, etc.)
npx skills add dbt-labs/dbt-agent-skills/skills/dbt

# Install only the migration skills
npx skills add dbt-labs/dbt-agent-skills/skills/dbt-migration

# Install a specific skill
npx skills add dbt-labs/dbt-agent-skills --skill using-dbt-for-analytics-engineering

# Install globally (available in all projects, stored in ~/.<agent>/skills/)
npx skills add dbt-labs/dbt-agent-skills --global

# Check for updates
npx skills check

# Update installed skills
npx skills update

Tessl

Install skills using Tessl, a package manager for agent skills:

# Install all skills
tessl install dbt-labs/dbt-agent-skills

# Install a specific skill
tessl install dbt-labs/dbt-agent-skills --skill using-dbt-for-analytics-engineering

# Install from GitHub directly
tessl install github:dbt-labs/dbt-agent-skills

Browse the tile on the Tessl registry.

dbt packages (dbt deps)

Install skills as dbt package dependencies. This repository publishes three independent packages, so you can install any combination:

Package	Subdirectory	Contents
dbt_agent_skills	skills/dbt	Everyday dbt development skills
dbt_migration_skills	skills/dbt-migration	One-off migration and upgrade skills
dbt_extras_skills	skills/dbt-extras	Extra skills, such as Mermaid DAG diagrams

Add any of them to your project's packages.yml:

packages:
  # Everyday dbt skills
  - git: "https://github.com/dbt-labs/dbt-agent-skills.git"
    subdirectory: "skills/dbt"
    revision: main

  # Migration skills (typically a one-off)
  - git: "https://github.com/dbt-labs/dbt-agent-skills.git"
    subdirectory: "skills/dbt-migration"
    revision: main

  # Extra skills
  - git: "https://github.com/dbt-labs/dbt-agent-skills.git"
    subdirectory: "skills/dbt-extras"
    revision: main

Then opt in by setting ai_provider in your own project's dbt_project.yml (it is ignored if set inside a package). Without it, dbt deps succeeds but installs no skills:

flags:
  ai_provider: claude   # Claude Code -> .claude/skills

Supported values include claude, codex, cursor, gemini, openai, and wizard (dbt Wizard CLI). Everything except claude installs to .agents/skills. To target several, use a list (ai_provider: [wizard, claude]), or pass --ai-provider claude,codex on the command line.

dbt deps

[!TIP] revision: main tracks the latest changes. For reproducible installs, pin revision to a Git tag or commit SHA instead.

See the dbt documentation on package skills for the full configuration reference, including how to disable individual skills.

Compatible Agents

These skills work with AI agents that support the Agent Skills format.

Available Skills

dbt (analytics engineering)

Skill	Description
using-dbt-for-analytics-engineering	Build and modify dbt models, debug errors, explore data sources, write tests
adding-dbt-unit-test	Add unit tests for dbt models, practice test-driven development
maintaining-dbt-documentation	Audit model/column doc coverage and draft missing descriptions in the project's own style
building-dbt-semantic-layer	Create semantic models, metrics, and dimensions with MetricFlow
answering-natural-language-questions-with-dbt	Answer business questions by querying the semantic layer
working-with-dbt-mesh	Implement dbt Mesh governance (contracts, access, groups, versions) and cross-project collaboration
troubleshooting-dbt-job-errors	Diagnose and resolve dbt platform job failures
configuring-dbt-mcp-server	Set up the dbt MCP server for Claude, Cursor, or VS Code
fetching-dbt-docs	Look up dbt documentation efficiently
running-dbt-commands	Run dbt CLI commands with correct flags, selectors, and parameter formats
querying-the-dbt-information-schema	Answer questions about project metadata (models, tests, columns, lineage) with SQL on dbt v2

dbt-migration (one-off use)

These skills are typically used once during a migration project rather than in every agent session.

Skill	Description
migrating-dbt-core-to-v2	Migrate dbt projects from dbt Core to dbt v2
migrating-dbt-project-across-platforms	Migrate dbt projects across data platforms
upgrading-dbt	Upgrade a dbt-core v1 project (1.3-1.7) to the latest dbt, applying breaking, behavior, and deprecated changes

Prerequisites

Most skills assume:

• dbt is installed and configured
• A dbt project with dbt_project.yml exists
• Basic familiarity with dbt concepts (models, tests, sources)

Some skills like fetching-dbt-docs and configuring-dbt-mcp-server can be used without an existing project.

Contributing

We welcome contributions! Whether you want to add a new dbt skill, improve existing ones, or fix issues, please see our Contributing Guide.

Format Specification

All skills in this repository follow the Agent Skills specification to ensure compatibility across different agent products.

Resources

• dbt Documentation
• dbt CLI Reference
• Agent Skills Documentation
• Agent Skills Specification

Community

• Issues: Report problems or suggest new skills
• Discussions: Share use cases and patterns
• Pull Requests: Contribute new skills or improvements
• Star this repository if you find it useful!

License

See LICENSE for details.

Skill Evaluation

See evals/README.md for the A/B testing tool to compare skill variations.