Marcela Hoyos Cano

How We Stopped Answering Data Questions and Built the Stack That Answers Them

If you've worked at a growing startup, you probably know the feeling: multiple teams pulling different numbers for the same metric, ops constantly asking engineering for basic answers, and creating or organizing metrics that's a real pain. Every new question feels like starting from scratch. This talk is the story of how a small team fixed that. First, by building a proper dbt architecture from scratch with Sources, Staging, Intermediate, and Marts so that things like bookings, revenue, and providers were defined in one place and everyone was looking at the same number. Once the data was reliable, we connected an LLM so non-technical teammates could ask questions in plain English and get real answers directly from Snowflake. No SQL, no ticket, no waiting on engineering. You'll walk away with a clear mental model for building a dbt layer people actually trust, a practical architecture for connecting an LLM to your warehouse, and the one thing that made it all click: your dbt docs are your LLM prompt.