Data Engineering Skills

Claude Code skills for Analytics & Data engineers working with dbt and Snowflake

Altimate Data Skills is a collection of Claude Code skills that encode the workflows and best practices of experienced analytics engineers. These skills transform Claude from a code generator into a capable data engineering assistant.

Key Results

• 53% accuracy on ADE-bench (43 real-world dbt tasks)
• 3x improvement on model creation tasks vs baseline
• 84% pass rate on Snowflake query optimization (62 TPC-H queries, 1TB dataset)
• 3.6x better performance gains vs baseline (16.8% avg improvement vs 4.7%)
• Skills that teach Claude how to work, not just what to write

Quick Start

/plugin marketplace add AltimateAI/data-engineering-skills

Install individual skill packs:

# Install dbt skills
/plugin install dbt-skills@data-engineering-skills

# Install Snowflake skills
/plugin install snowflake-skills@data-engineering-skills

# Install altimate-code delegation skill
/plugin install altimate-code@data-engineering-skills

Available Skills

dbt Skills

Snowflake Skills

altimate-code Delegation

Use this skill when a task needs altimate-code's wired-up warehouse tools, column lineage, multi-step data exploration, or its 100+ specialized data tools.

Requires altimate-code: npm install -g altimate-code (Node 20+). Docs: docs.altimate.sh · Source: AltimateAI/altimate-code. The skill will detect a missing install and surface the exact command to the user.

How Skills Work

Skills are markdown files that teach Claude how to approach tasks, not just what syntax to use. Each skill has two parts:

1. Trigger Conditions

When should this skill activate?

---
name: creating-dbt-models
description: |
  Guide for creating dbt models. ALWAYS use this skill when:
  (1) Creating ANY new model (staging, intermediate, mart)
  (2) Task mentions "create", "build", "add" with model/table
  (3) Modifying model logic or columns
---

2. Workflow Instructions

What steps should Claude follow?

# dbt Model Development

**Read before you write. Build after you write. Verify your output.**

## Critical Rules
1. ALWAYS run `dbt build` after creating models - compile is NOT enough
2. ALWAYS verify output after build using `dbt show`
3. If build fails 3+ times, stop and reassess your approach
...

Usage Examples

Skills activate automatically based on your request:

Combining with Altimate MCP Tools

Skills become even more powerful when combined with Altimate's MCP server. The MCP server provides real-time access to your dbt project and data warehouse:

Kits

Kits bundle skills, MCP servers, and instructions into a single activatable unit. Instead of installing skills one by one, activate a kit to get a complete development setup.

Available Kits

Quick Start

# Install the kit
altimate-code kit install AltimateAI/data-engineering-skills

# Activate for your project
altimate-code kit activate dbt-snowflake

# Check what's active
altimate-code kit status

See kits/README.md for the full kit format reference and how to create your own.

Benchmark Results

Evaluated using ADE-bench, a framework for evaluating AI agents on analytics engineering tasks. All tests were run using Claude Sonnet 4.5.

Overall Results

Results by Task Category

Snowflake Query Optimization (TPC-H SF1000)

Benchmark on TPC-H 1TB dataset (62 queries) testing optimizing-query-text skill. All tests were run using Claude Sonnet 4.5.

Skills provide structured optimization with query profiling, anti-pattern detection, and semantic preservation validation.

Note: This benchmark uses our internal evaluation framework. We plan to open-source it soon with additional evals.

Contributing

We welcome contributions! Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

Ideas for contributions:

• New skills for workflows we haven't covered
• Improvements to existing skills based on your team's patterns
• Benchmark results on different datasets
• Bug reports and feature requests

Roadmap

We're actively developing:

• Airflow skills — DAG development, debugging, testing
• Cross-platform migration — dbt to/from SQL Server, Oracle
• Snowflake cost optimization — Warehouse sizing, query patterns
• Data quality workflows — Anomaly detection, freshness checks

Resources

• Altimate MCP Server Docs
• ADE-bench Framework
• dbt Slack Channel
• Contact Us

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Built by the team at Altimate AI — Making data engineering delightful.

{
  "name": "data-engineering-skills",
  "owner": {
    "name": "Altimate AI",
    "email": "support@altimate.ai"
  },
  "metadata": {
    "description": "Skills for data engineering workflows",
    "version": "1.0.0"
  },
  "plugins": [
    {
      "name": "dbt-skills",
      "description": "Skills for dbt development, testing, debugging, and refactoring",
      "source": "./",
      "strict": false,
      "skills": [
        "./skills/dbt/creating-dbt-models",
        "./skills/dbt/debugging-dbt-errors",
        "./skills/dbt/testing-dbt-models",
        "./skills/dbt/documenting-dbt-models",
        "./skills/dbt/migrating-sql-to-dbt",
        "./skills/dbt/refactoring-dbt-models",
        "./skills/dbt/developing-incremental-models"
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "snowflake-skills",
      "description": "Skills for Snowflake query optimization",
      "source": "./",
      "strict": false,
      "skills": [
        "./skills/snowflake/optimizing-query-by-id",
        "./skills/snowflake/optimizing-query-text",
        "./skills/snowflake/finding-expensive-queries"
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "databricks-skills",
      "description": "Skills for Databricks SQL query optimization",
      "source": "./",
      "strict": false,
      "skills": [
        "./skills/databricks/optimizing-databricks-sql"
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "altimate-code",
      "description": "Delegate data engineering tasks to altimate-code — a specialized CLI agent with 100+ data tools (warehouse profiling, column lineage, dbt build/test, FinOps)",
      "source": "./",
      "strict": false,
      "skills": [
        "./skills/altimate-code"
      ]
    }
  ]
}