INTELLIGENCE
Guides
How to Set Up Tinybird for Real-Time Analytics
Tinybird is a managed ClickHouse platform that turns raw data into queryable REST endpoints without requiring database administration experience. You create a workspace, define a data source, write SQL logic in Pipes, and publish a live API in under 30 minutes. The setup suits small teams that need sub-second query latency on streaming or batch data but lack the engineering capacity to operate ClickHouse infrastructure themselves.
How to Get Started with Amplitude Analytics
Amplitude is a product analytics platform that tracks how users interact with your app or website through events — discrete user actions like signing up, clicking a button, or completing a purchase. The free plan covers up to 50,000 monthly tracked users and bundles feature flags, session replay, and web experiments at no cost. Most teams reach their first useful funnel or retention chart within a day of connecting their product, using Autocapture if no engineer is available.
How to Get Started with dbt Canvas
dbt Canvas is a visual, drag-and-drop interface inside dbt Cloud that lets analysts build and edit data transformation models without writing SQL. Available on Team and Enterprise plans since May 2025, it works as a node-based pipeline editor: you connect source tables to transformation operators, preview output at every step, and dbt automatically generates production-grade SQL that flows into standard version control and testing pipelines, keeping governance intact.
How to Build an Operations Dashboard in Looker Studio
Looker Studio is Google's free dashboard builder that connects to Google Sheets, CSV files, BigQuery, and more than 600 data sources. To build an operations dashboard, connect your data source, set up scorecards for key metrics, add trend charts, and configure date filters. The full setup takes under an hour and requires no coding or a paid subscription.
How to Set Up Apache Superset for Analytics
Apache Superset is a free, open source business intelligence platform that lets teams explore data, build charts, and share dashboards without deep SQL expertise. Using Docker Compose, you can run a full Superset instance locally in under 15 minutes. It connects to more than 40 databases including PostgreSQL, BigQuery, and Snowflake, making it a practical alternative to paid BI tools for teams that already have data infrastructure in place.
How to Set Up AI Features in Metabase 60
Metabase 60, released in April 2026, adds AI capabilities across all plans including the free open-source version. To activate them, navigate to Admin settings, connect an Anthropic API key, select a model, and enable Metabot. Once configured, you get natural language querying, auto-generated chart summaries, an official MCP server for Claude and VS Code, and Metabot in Slack. The setup takes under ten minutes and requires no paid Metabase tier.
How to Get Started with Microsoft Fabric (2026)
Microsoft Fabric is Microsoft's unified analytics platform that combines data pipelines, lakehouses, notebooks, and Power BI reporting in a single SaaS product. As of 2026, any Microsoft account holder can start a free 60-day trial at app.fabric.microsoft.com without IT involvement. This guide walks through creating a workspace, uploading data, running a SQL query, and using Copilot to generate reports without writing code.
How to Set Up DuckLake for Local Analytics
DuckLake is a lakehouse format released to production in April 2026 that stores all metadata in a SQL database instead of scattered JSON files on object storage. Unlike Delta Lake or Apache Iceberg, it runs on a local SQLite or PostgreSQL catalog with no separate catalog server required. You can spin up a production-ready lakehouse in under five minutes using the ducklake extension for DuckDB v1.5.2, with ACID transactions, time travel, and schema evolution included out of the box.
How to Set Up Claude in Excel (2026 Guide)
Claude for Excel is an official Anthropic add-in that brings Claude directly into Microsoft Excel as a persistent sidebar. Available to Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise Claude subscribers, it installs in under two minutes through the Microsoft Office Add-ins store. Users can analyze data, write formulas, clean datasets, and build reports using plain-English prompts from inside any Excel workbook. As of March 2026, the add-in also supports Shared Context with PowerPoint, carrying spreadsheet analysis into slide generation without manual copying.