The dbt Cloud CLI is now generally available, with support for Power User for dbt

At our recent Product Launch Showcase, we announced that the dbt Cloud CLI is now generally available for all users of dbt Cloud, and now includes support for the popular VS Code extension Power User for dbt, built by Altimate AI.

Here’s the thing with data transformation: it’s most effective when it’s not siloed. At successful data organizations, it’s a collaborative, transparent process: any team member with enough business context can get directly involved. That helps eliminate bottlenecks, improve data quality, and enable faster development cycles.

That’s why dbt Cloud supports multiple development experiences. The people closest to the business context may have a broad range of skillsets; they should all be able to work however they’re most comfortable, while contributing to the same central knowledge base.

For more technical contributors — particularly those with a background in data engineering — the ability to use familiar, carefully configured tools to develop is a huge productivity unlock. The recently introduced dbt Cloud CLI (now generally available) is a command-line experience for such developers. It allows you to develop using any terminal or IDE of your choosing, backed by the power of dbt Cloud.

You can use the dbt Cloud CLI to contribute to the same dbt projects as coworkers who may be using the in-browser Cloud IDE, or the new low-code visual editor (currently in beta). With dbt Cloud you get multiple pathways to contribute, all powered by a single, central platform.

Building a better developer experience

When we announced the Cloud CLI back in October, developers flocked to try it and found that, with the power of dbt Cloud, it provides a superior local development experience to dbt Core. With dbt Cloud CLI, you can:

• Easily save time and money. With deferral in the dbt Cloud CLI, you can build, run and test only models you’ve edited without having to first build the models upstream of them, significantly reducing resource consumption.
• Build for scale. Build and seamlessly reference models across multiple inter-connected dbt projects using a dbt Mesh architecture.
• Enjoy improved performance, particularly for CPU-intensive commands like dbt parse, and for larger dbt projects. Along with improved artifact download speeds, local development with the dbt Cloud CLI now offers >30% faster parse performance than dbt Core running on an M1 Mac.
• (New) Never worry about dbt version upgrades. Once you enable versionless upgrades in dbt Cloud, vetted new features and fixes will be delivered to your projects continuously.
• (New) Connect to your Azure environments, ensuring your team can operate with velocity regardless of your deployment architecture.
• (New) Enjoy parallel command execution, allowing for multiple concurrent invocations at once.

From the outset, we designed the Cloud CLI to be highly extensible, downloading the same artifacts and producing the same outputs as dbt Core does locally to ensure compatibility, making it easier to port workloads to dbt Cloud without disruption. Support for one familiar tool was missing, though: a rich VS Code extension, which was a request we heard frequently from customers.

Extensions let third-party developers enhance VS Code’s native capabilities, and there are great ones out there for dbt. Above all, the Power User for dbt extension is much beloved by the dbt Community.

So we called up Altimate AI, the folks behind it, and got to work together.

Introducing Power User for dbt support for the dbt Cloud CLI

We’re pleased to say that the dbt Cloud CLI’s integration with Power User for dbt is now available to use. It’s one of the most feature-packed ways to build locally with dbt. Today, the extension includes:

• All of the features of the local Power User for dbt extension, including query previews, smart-complete of code, and and accelerated development through AI agents
• One-click, managed installation and configuration of Cloud CLI
• All the capabilities of the dbt Cloud CLI mentioned above — deferral, dbt Mesh support, faster parse performance, versionless upgrades and more.

Users can also access Altimate AI’s AI development agents via the DataPilot platform, which further accelerates and streamlines data development work.

We’re excited to partner with Altimate to combine the powers of dbt Cloud and Power user for dbt. In just the couple of months since beta availability, hundreds of developers have used the Power User extension with dbt Cloud. If you’re interested in giving it a try, check out Altimate AI’s documentation and get started now.

Support for linting out of the box

Alongside VS Code extension support, many users have been looking for a way to ensure linting parity locally for their dbt Mesh projects. To that end, the Cloud CLI now supports linting with SQLFluff via the dbt sqlfluff command — allowing you to ensure code consistency across your projects, prevent errors, and increase developer productivity.

This is the same SQLFluff you know and love, now available across the Cloud IDE and Cloud CLI.

What’s next for dbt Cloud and the Power User for dbt integration?

We’re continuing to iterate and improve the local dbt Cloud development experience every week. In addition to improving speed and performance, we’re particularly focused on making the local development experience work more seamlessly with the rest of dbt Cloud, including:

• Letting users define and invoke production jobs from the Cloud CLI directly.
• A deeper integration with dbt Explorer.
• More material on the popular Power User for dbt and dbt Cloud CLI integration, including an upcoming talk at Coalesce! Register now and catch us there.

Have questions for us? Give our team a shout in the #dbt-cloud-cli-and-ide channel in the dbt Community Slack. Happy CLI-ing!