@dbt-tools/core

@dbt-tools/core is the TypeScript library that provides artifact parsing, discovery, and analysis for the other dbt-tools packages. CLI, Web, and MCP all build on top of it.

When to use Core directly

Use @dbt-tools/core when you need to:

• Build custom scripts or services in TypeScript that analyze dbt artifacts
• Integrate artifact analysis into an existing TypeScript/Node.js application
• Access lower-level parsed artifact data than the CLI JSON surfaces

If you only need a shell command or a browser UI, use @dbt-tools/cli or @dbt-tools/web instead.

Installation

npm install @dbt-tools/core
# or
pnpm add @dbt-tools/core

Key capabilities

@dbt-tools/core provides:

• Artifact loading — read manifest.json, run_results.json, catalog.json, and sources.json from local paths or remote roots (s3://, gs://)
• Discovery — fuzzy search for models, tests, sources, snapshots, and exposures by name
• Dependency tracing — resolve upstream and downstream dependency graphs
• Run result enrichment — join manifest metadata with run result execution data
• Schema version handling — parse multiple dbt artifact schema versions via dbt-artifacts-parser

Source

The Core package source is under packages/core/ in the repository.

Refer to the package README and TypeScript types for the full API surface.

Related

• Choose by goal — when to use Core vs CLI vs MCP
• Local and remote artifacts
• dbt Artifacts

• @dbt-tools/core on npm