dbt Skill for Claude

Comprehensive dbt guidance: project structure, modeling, testing, CI/CD, production patterns. Targets Snowflake and BigQuery. Beginner-friendly with progressive scaling.

When to Use

Activate when: creating/modifying dbt models, choosing materializations, structuring layers, setting up tests, implementing CI/CD, configuring sources/freshness, writing Jinja macros, reviewing dbt projects, making analytics engineering decisions.

Skip when: basic SQL syntax, warehouse admin, raw pipeline config (Fivetran/Airbyte), BI tool config.

Core Principles

1. DRY via ref()/source() -- never hardcode table names
2. Single Source of Truth -- each concept defined once; staging = entry point, marts = consumer interface
3. Idempotent Transformations -- dbt run twice produces identical results
4. Test Everything -- every model has at minimum PK uniqueness and not-null tests
5. Progressive Complexity -- start with views/tables, add complexity when volume demands it

Project Structure