Consumption & cost · rule warehouse-model-never-read
dbt models nobody queries
A Metacenta review checks this under the rule Models the warehouse records somebody reading. Everything below applies whether or not you ever commission one.
What this rule checks
Using your warehouse's query history, this rule flags dbt models that were read at most once in the collection window. A single stray query does not clear a model. Ephemeral models are skipped, because nothing can query them directly.
Why it matters
The model is built, stored and, if incremental, merged on every run, to produce a table that nothing in the warehouse opens. That is build time and storage spent on nothing.
How to fix it
Retire or confirm the models nobody reads. Confirm with whoever asked for the model that nothing reads it by another route. If nothing does, stop building it first and delete it later, so it is easy to restore.
When it is fine to leave
A BI extract, a reverse-ETL job or a quarterly export can read a table by a route the warehouse does not log. A model read once a year for an audit also looks unused over a shorter window.
What we need to check it
Warehouse query history: metadata only, from a query you run yourself or a read-only role. We never see query text or results. The rule declines when no model can be matched to the history.