What CoIsland watches in dbt

Each monitor kind brings its own query and its own card in the notch.

How to monitor dbt from your Mac’s notch

dbt emails a failed job to whoever set up its notifications. A CoIsland monitor checks on its own schedule and opens the notch only when something new happens: a run fails, a run is still going long after it should be done, a source stops being loaded.

Each monitor is a file in ~/.coisland/watches:

-- name: Nightly build failed
-- kind: dbtcloud.runs
-- connector: dbt-12345
-- every: 5m
-- alert: new-rows

job:123456 lookback:24h

Connect dbt covers the token, every field and each kind; all connectors share one page.

Connect it in three steps

  1. In dbt, Account settings › API tokens › Personal tokens: create a personal access token.

  2. Add a dbt connector with any dbt page's address (it carries the account ID) and the token. Test connector lists your jobs.

  3. Pick a monitor kind or an example: any failed run, runs over an hour, stale sources.

Built for dbt

  • A personal access token is enough: no account admin, no service token.
  • Every region: use your account's access URL.
  • The token stays in the macOS Keychain and goes only to your dbt account.

Then hand it to an agent

A click on the alert opens the agent in a terminal under it, with the whole alert as its first message.

dbt questions

How do I get an alert when a dbt job fails?

Add a Failed job runs monitor, pick the job or leave it empty for every job you can see. Each run that ends in error reaches the notch once, and its alert page shows the step that failed and its last log lines.

Can CoIsland start or cancel dbt jobs?

No. It only reads runs, jobs and artifacts.

Does it work with dbt Core?

No. It reads the dbt platform's Admin API, which runs dbt for you.

Other connectors

Put your work stack in the notch

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