Last week, we explored DinoAI's powerful context feature that helps analytics engineers work with large repositories. Today, we're diving into another game-changing capability: .dinorules – a simple yet powerful way to ensure consistent standards across your entire dbt™ project.

Watch the full livestream on YouTube

The Challenge: Maintaining Consistency Across dbt™ Projects

Analytics engineers face a common dilemma: maintaining code quality and consistency is crucial, but it's also incredibly time-consuming. Teams often struggle with:

• Inconsistent SQL styling across different developers

• Missing or incomplete documentation

• Varying approaches to modeling techniques

• The burden of manually updating existing models when standards change

As Fabio noted during our livestream: "Nobody follows proper indentation when exploring your data... You want to be in the flow, you want to just write SQL and see the results."

But eventually, that exploration SQL needs to become production code – and that's where the tedious work of standardization often begins.

Introducing .dinorules

The .dinorules feature provides a simple solution: define your standards once in a text file, and let DinoAI enforce them automatically throughout your development process.

Adding a .dinorules file to your repository gives DinoAI specific instructions on how to generate and format code, documentation, and visualizations. Instead of constantly reminding team members about standards or spending hours reformatting code, you can focus on building business logic while DinoAI handles the consistency.

How .dinorules Works

Creating a .dinorules file is straightforward – it's just a text file with natural language instructions. There's no specific format or syntax required, though using bullet points or sections can help with organization.

When you interact with DinoAI, it automatically loads your .dinorules file as part of its context, applying your standards to every operation without requiring additional prompts.

Key Use Cases Demonstrated

During our livestream, we showed how .dinorules transforms several common workflows:

1. SQL Styling Standardization

One of the most immediate benefits is consistent SQL formatting. In our demo, we defined rules for:

• Uppercase SQL keywords

• Trailing commas

• Consistent indentation

• Snake case for naming conventions

When generating new models or updating existing ones, DinoAI automatically follows these standards, ensuring consistent readability across your project.

2. Documentation Generation

Documentation is often neglected because it's time-consuming. With .dinorules, you can define how documentation should be structured, where it should be stored, and what it should include.

In our demonstration, we specified that:

• Each dbt™ model should have its own documentation file

• Files should follow a specific naming convention

• Documentation should include certain elements

DinoAI then automatically generated comprehensive documentation for our models following these exact specifications.

3. Visual Diagram Creation

A particularly powerful feature we demonstrated was automatic diagram generation for complex models. By adding a rule that complex logic should include a Mermaid diagram, DinoAI created visual representations of our joins and transformations.

These diagrams are stored as code in your repository, making them version-controlled and accessible to all team members. As Fabio pointed out, "GitHub natively supports visualizing Mermaid diagrams... which means that anyone who is reviewing the PR will actually also see the mermaid diagram."

4. Bulk Updates to Existing Models

Perhaps most impressively, .dinorules makes it easy to update existing models to match new standards. Rather than editing files one by one, you can:

1. Create or update your .dinorules file with new standards

2. Ask DinoAI to update a specific file or entire directory

3. Review and accept the changes

In our demonstration, we showed how to update an entire directory of staging models to match new SQL formatting standards in just minutes – a task that would typically take hours manually.

Real-World Impact

The ability to maintain consistent standards without manual effort has several significant benefits:

Reduced cognitive load: Developers can focus on business logic rather than formatting details.

Faster code reviews: Consistent formatting and documentation make reviews more efficient.

Better onboarding: New team members can quickly understand standard practices.

Higher code quality: Automatic enforcement of best practices improves overall quality.

As noted during the livestream: "Nobody is going to give you time to improve the readability of your code... With .dinorules, you can have good development practices and high-quality repositories of dbt™ code without actually spending a non-trivial amount of time behind it."

Getting Started with .dinorules

If you're a current Paradime user, here are some recommended starting points for your .dinorules file:

SQL Formatting: Define preferences for uppercase/lowercase, indentation, and comma placement.

Documentation Requirements: Specify how and where documentation should be generated.

Testing Standards: Define what types of tests should be applied to different column types.

CTEs vs. Subqueries: Set standards for how complex queries should be structured.

Comments: Require explanatory comments for complex SQL functions.

Combining Context and Rules

When used together with DinoAI's context feature (covered in our previous livestream), .dinorules creates an even more powerful development experience. The context feature provides DinoAI with the right information about your specific project, while .dinorules ensures that information is used consistently according to your team's standards.

Try It Today

DinoAI's .dinorules feature transforms what would typically be hours of tedious standardization work into minutes of productive development. By encoding your team's best practices into a simple text file, you can ensure consistent, high-quality dbt™ code across your entire project.

Current Paradime users can start using .dinorules today by adding a .dinorules file to their repository. New users can start a free trial to experience how DinoAI's combination of context and rules can transform their analytics engineering workflow.

The days of manual code formatting and inconsistent standards are over. With DinoAI's .dinorules, you can focus on solving business problems while maintaining the highest standards of code quality.

Try DinoAI for free today and see the difference for yourself!