AI-Powered Data Development:How Claude Code & dbt-MCP Transformed Our Data Engineering Workflow

At Zendesk, moving a dbt model from a functional to a foundational layer used to take three days of manual lineage tracing with error rates of up to 30%. Slow model promotion caused teams to build duplicate logic, creating reconciliation nightmares and wasted capacity.

We used Claude Code and dbt-MCP to cut this process to 1 hour, enabling our lean, 8-person team to significantly increase its capacity for high-value architectural work. We will share the process and tools we used to automate enterprise-scale data governance.