Developing in Lightdash

This guide is for people who are new to Lightdash and need to learn the developer workflow. We’ll go over how to install and use the CLI, plus how to create metrics and dimensions.

Install the Lightdash CLI

Authenticate your CLI (login)

Install Lightdash Skills

Add tables to Lightdash

How to create dimensions

How to create metrics

Autogenerate Lightdash-ready YAML

Preview local changes in Lightdash

Deploy changes to production

Automate with CI/CD

Tag the dbt models you want to appear in Lightdash. Before you start, we recommend adding a lightdash (or similar) tag to the dbt models you want to expose as Tables in Lightdash, then setting your project’s Table Configuration to match. This keeps staging and intermediate models out of Lightdash and makes your project easier to navigate.

We recommend reading through all the docs above to understand all the details, but you can start by checking out this video overview of the Lightdash developer workflow:

Also check out the Notion version of the Lightdash Developer Quickstart. This version is built in Notion so you can make a copy and follow along, or customize and share with your whole team!