dbt ships with a Command Line Interface (CLI) for running your dbt project. The dbt CLI is free to use and open source.

Your command line has a concept of a "working directory": each command that you run is executed from a directory on your computer. To run your dbt project using the command line, you'll need to ensure that your command line's working directory is within your dbt project.

Once your working directory is your dbt project, you can execute dbt commands:

:::tip Pro tip: Using the --help flag

Most command line tools (dbt included) have a --help flag. This flag is useful if you ever want to check which commands and arguments you can use. For example: • dbt --help: this will list the commands available • dbt run --help: this will the flags available for the run command

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A full list of dbt commands can be found in the reference section