dbtective documentation
Running dbtective
GitHub Actions

GitHub Actions

Run dbtective as part of your CI/CD pipeline using the official GitHub Action.

Basic Setup

Add dbtective to your workflow file (e.g., .github/workflows/ci.yml).If you don’t have access to your warehouse in the CI environment, you can set only_manifest: true to skip catalog based rules. We recommend pinning both a major and minor version number.

- name: Run dbtective
  uses: feliblo/dbtective@v0.2.10
  with:
    config-file: "dbtective.yml"
    entry-point: "."
    verbose: "false"

Complete example:

name: CI pipeline

on:
  pull_request:
    branches:
      - main

jobs:
  dbtective:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Generate or fetch dbt artifacts
        run: |
          pip install dbt-core dbt-[adapter]  # e.g., dbt-postgres, dbt-bigquery, etc.
          dbt compile # to generate manifest.json
          dbt docs generate # to generate catalog.json

      - name: Run dbtective
        uses: feliblo/dbtective@v0.2.10
        with:
          config-file: "dbtective.yml"
          entry-point: "."
          verbose: "false"

Configuration Options

InputDefaultDescription
config-filedbtective.ymlLocation of the YML config file
entry-point.Path to dbt project root directory
manifest-filetarget/manifest.jsonPath to dbt manifest file
verbosefalseRun dbtective in verbose mode
output-formattableOutput format: table, json, csv, or ndjson
output-fileW(does nothing in combination with table output format).
versionlatestVersion of dbtective to install (e.g., ‘v0.1.31’ or ’latest’)

Structured Output for CI

You can capture dbtective results as JSON for downstream processing (dashboards, Slack alerts, artifact storage):

- name: Run dbtective (JSON output)
  uses: feliblo/dbtective@v0.2.10
  with:
    output-format: "json"
    output-file: "dbtective-results.json"

- name: Upload results
  uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
  with:
    name: dbtective-results
    path: dbtective-results.json

Available formats: json, csv, ndjson. See the CLI reference for details.

Exit Codes

The action will:

  • Exit with code 0 if all rules pass or only warnings are found
  • Exit with code 1 if any rules fail with severity: "error"

This allows you to fail the CI pipeline when dbtective detects issues.

Getting Help

CLI ReferencePre-commit & Prek