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AI agents can already build dashboards, but they leave behind a pile of one-off code that data teams can't audit or maintain. Ben Jones talks with Dave Fowler (GM of Charts at Fivetran, founder of Chartio) and RJ Andrews (author of Info We Trust, Sr. Principal Data Graphics Designer & Engineer at dbt Charts) about dbt Charts, an open-source "markdown for dashboards" that lives in a charts folder next to your dbt models.
They cover:
• Why dbt Charts does for the charting layer what dbt did for transformation
• Why charts are a social technology, and why agents need the right "grooves"
• How 350 years of chart history, including a 1930s Soviet chart with red year labels, shaped smarter defaults for ordinary bar and line charts
• Ben's first dbt Charts dashboard, built with Claude Code on live USGS earthquake data
• Language-first BI, the "Chartifact," and themes that extend each other
• Listener questions on Streamlit and Databricks, and on how fast upstream model changes reach a chart
• Why it's free for teams of up to three, in the spirit of Tableau Public
Chapters
(0:00) Welcome: Dave Fowler and RJ Andrews
(1:05) What dbt Charts is, and why AI-built dashboards need it
(2:37) Doing for charts what dbt did for transformation
(3:10) A markdown for dashboards, in your dbt repo
(4:29) Charts are a social technology
(5:40) Giving agents the right grooves
(6:57) How the project started: Chartio, dbt, and Fivetran
(8:19) "Our CEO will only read a line graph"
(10:05) A 1930s Soviet chart and making charts work harder
(11:25) Using the axis as an encoding channel
(12:27) Label every bar: opinionated defaults you can override
(13:15) RJ's design corpus
(14:58) Demo: Ben's first dbt Charts dashboard
(16:18) Language first: every dashboard is YAML
(17:35) The design panel and the "Chartifact"
(18:46) Themes that extend each other
(19:55) Outliers that bust out of the chart
(20:43) Analog vs. digital design freedom
(21:59) Designing a system, not a chart
(22:51) Listener question: where dbt Charts fits next to Streamlit and Databricks
(24:21) An open standard and an open-core business
(25:16) Free tiers: lessons from Tableau Public, Jira, and Chartio
(27:41) Charts next to models: rename a column without breaking dashboards
(28:59) Listener question: how fast do upstream changes reach a chart?
(30:38) What's next, and why charts need other people
(32:25) Getting started at dbtcharts.com
(33:44) Custom charts and the Betty White chart
(34:33) Breaking the rules, and wrap-up
Links
Episode page and full transcript: https://poweredbydata.com/podcast/dbt-charts-better-data-graphics-with-ai
dbt Charts: https://dbtcharts.com
Getting Started tutorial: https://docs.dbtcharts.com/guides/getting-started/
Dave Fowler: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dave-fowler-chartio/
RJ Andrews: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raymondjandrews/
