Ownership & accountability · rule source-unowned
dbt sources with no owner
A Metacenta review checks this under the rule Sources declare an owner. Everything below applies whether or not you ever commission one.
What this rule checks
Where a project owns sources through an owner-shaped meta key, this rule flags the source tables that carry none. dbt groups cannot apply to sources, so a groups-only project is not judged here.
Why it matters
A source is the boundary where data arrives from a system this team does not control. With nobody named, a load that stops has no one to chase upstream.
How to fix it
Name an owner for each ingested source. Set the project's owner key in the source's meta. Put it on the source block rather than each table, so every table under it inherits.
Before:
sources:
- name: stripe
tables:
- name: charges
After:
sources:
- name: stripe
meta:
owner: payments-team
tables:
- name: charges
When it is fine to leave
A source owned in a data catalogue or ingestion tool, outside dbt, is owned in practice. The rule declines when the project has no meta owner convention for sources at all.
What we need to check it
manifest.json alone.