Artifacts

When running dbt jobs, dbt Cloud generates and saves artifacts. You can use these artifacts, like manifest.json, catalog.json, and sources.json to power different aspects of dbt Cloud, namely: dbt Explorer, dbt Docs, and source freshness reporting.

Create dbt Cloud Artifacts

dbt Explorer uses the metadata provided by the Discovery API to display the details about the state of your project. It uses metadata from your staging and production deployment environments (development environment metadata is coming soon).

dbt Explorer automatically retrieves the metadata updates after each job run in the production or staging deployment environment so it always has the latest results for your project — meaning it's always automatically updated after each job run.

To view a resource, its metadata, and what commands are needed, refer to generate metadata for more details.

 For dbt Docs

The following steps are for legacy dbt Docs only. For the current documentation experience, see dbt Explorer.

While running any job can produce artifacts, you should only associate one production job with a given project to produce the project's artifacts. You can designate this connection on the Project details page. To access this page:

1. From dbt Cloud, click on your account name in the left side menu and select Account settings.
2. Select your project, and click Edit in the lower right.
3. Under Artifacts, select the jobs you want to produce documentation and source freshness artifacts for.

Configuring Artifacts

If you don't see your job listed, you might need to edit the job and select Run source freshness and Generate docs on run.

Editing the job to generate artifacts

When you add a production job to a project, dbt Cloud updates the content and provides links to the production documentation and source freshness artifacts it generated for that project. You can see these links by clicking Deploy in the upper left, selecting Jobs, and then selecting the production job. From the job page, you can select a specific run to see how artifacts were updated for that run only.

Documentation

Navigate to dbt Explorer through the Explore link to view your project's resources and lineage to gain a better understanding of its latest production state.

To view a resource, its metadata, and what commands are needed, refer to generate metadata for more details.

Both the job's commands and the docs generate step (triggered by the Generate docs on run checkbox) must succeed during the job invocation to update the documentation.

 For dbt Docs

When set up, dbt Cloud updates the Documentation link in the header tab so it links to documentation for this job. This link always directs you to the latest version of the documentation for your project.

Source Freshness

To view the latest source freshness result, refer to generate metadata for more detail. Then navigate to dbt Explorer through the Explore link.

 For dbt Docs

Configuring a job for the Source Freshness artifact setting also updates the data source link under Deploy. The new link points to the latest Source Freshness report for the selected job.

A link to the latest source freshness snapshot for the selected job