stupidcucumber/project-dagster-university/lesson-5

Installing the dbt skill

All of this can be accomplished using only the dagster-expert skill, it knows a good deal about dbt, in particular how dbt relates to Dagster. But the dbt skill gives the agent deeper context about dbt such as model patterns, schema YAML, ref() and source() usage, dbt commands.

With both skills, the agent can know about DbtProjectComponent for Dagster and dbt specifics when necessary. This will make more sense when we discuss skill chaining.

Installation is the same regardless of which AI coding agent you use and should look familiar from when we discussed installing the Dagster skill.

Claude Code

In Claude Code, add the dbt skills from the plugin marketplace and then install the plugin:

/plugin marketplace add dbt-labs/dbt-agent-skills

/plugin install dbt@dbt-agent-marketplace

Then reload the plugin registry:

/reload-plugins

Once installed, confirm it's enabled:

/plugin

Switch to the Installed tab and verify that the dbt skills show as enabled. You should see entries like:

• dbt:using-dbt-for-analytics-engineering: enabled
• dbt:running-dbt-commands: enabled

Codex, Cursor, Copilot

Install using the npx skills command:

npx skills add dbt-labs/dbt-agent-skills

Confirm the dbt skills appear in your skill list and are enabled. You want at least dbt:using-dbt-for-analytics-engineering available.

You're set

Once the dbt skill is installed, it activates automatically when your prompt is about dbt work -- writing models, updating schema.yml, running dbt commands. You don't invoke it with a slash command; it loads based on what you ask. In the next section you'll see it activate as you scaffold the dbt project alongside the Dagster integration.