Otto, your AI assistant

Otto is your intelligent data engineering Agent, ready to help you in the sidebar and throughout the Ascend platform. Otto enhances your experience by automating routine tasks, assisting with builds, and offering insights to improve your data engineering workflows.

What is Otto?

Otto is an AI-powered Agent integrated within the Ascend platform that streamlines your data engineering process from development to production. Otto is trained in proven best practices and equipped with tools to offload work from data teams.

With these Agentic capabilities built in, you can:

• Edit code with inline Agents that help accelerate development directly within the code editor.
• Build and monitor pipelines with natural language — ideal for bulk migrations, usage audits, and pipeline optimizations.
• Rely on background Agents that operate autonomously on routine tasks like monitoring pipelines, documenting changes, and fixing common issues as they happen.
• Create custom Agents to automate anything from enforcing conventions to generating Environment-specific reports.

Getting started with Otto

First, verify that you've set up your OpenAI API key in Ascend. To start using Otto, look for the sparkles ✨ icon in the top bar of your Ascend Instance.

For new users, Otto serves as an excellent onboarding resource, providing guidance and answering questions as you explore the platform. For experienced users, Otto boosts productivity by automating routine tasks and providing insights to optimize your data pipelines. Otto serves as both an assistant and a mentor, helping you achieve more with less effort while continuously improving your data engineering skills.

Otto's capabilities

Otto offers a comprehensive range of capabilities designed to enhance your data engineering experience:

Component building assistance

Otto helps you build all types of Components in Ascend, providing guidance on creating and configuring Read, Write, Transform, and other Component types. Whether you're new to Ascend or working with an unfamiliar Component type, Otto offers contextual help to accelerate your development process in Python, SQL, and YAML.

Code conversion

Otto can help convert Components during migrations. For example, Otto can convert Components from Ibis to Snowpark data processing.

Lineage tracking

Otto can answer questions about your pipeline lineage, helping you understand where that ID column comes from without spending hours tracing through tables.

Data quality monitoring

Otto helps monitor and maintain data quality by identifying potential issues, suggesting quality checks, and providing insights into data anomalies. This capability ensures that your data pipelines produce reliable and accurate results.

Error explanation

When you encounter errors in your data pipelines, Otto can explain them with the click of a button. This capability helps unblock development by translating complex error messages into clear, actionable explanations, reducing troubleshooting time and frustration.

Custom Agents and rules

You can also create custom Agents to specialize in tasks unique to your data pipelines and operations. Customize your AI experience by creating your own Agents to do everything from sending Slack notifications to reviewing code. Or, tailor Otto's behavior across the platform with custom rules that enforce your internal policies and operate effectively with your existing workflows.

Slack integration

Connect Otto to Slack for seamless team collaboration via a model context protocol (MCP) server.

Automated pipeline activity summaries

Configure Otto to automatically generate comprehensive email summaries of your pipeline activities and provide insights into recent runs, performance trends, and notable events. These summaries help you stay informed about your data pipeline health and identify areas that may need attention without manually reviewing individual run logs.

Automatic Git commit messages

Otto automatically generates meaningful Git commit messages based on your changes, eliminating the need to manually describe your work. This feature saves time and ensures consistency in your version control history.

Pipeline documentation

Creating and maintaining documentation for data pipelines can be time-consuming. Otto assists by generating documentation that describes your pipelines' structure, Components, and dependencies, helping keep your documentation up-to-date and comprehensive.

Run history analysis

Otto has access to your entire Flow run history, enabling him to identify frequently failing code and help you stabilize and strengthen your runs.

Breaking change notifications

If you've been away from work for a few days, Otto can summarize any breaking changes you should be aware of and help you get back up to speed with your data engineering workflows.

Interact with Otto

There are 4 primary ways users interact with Agents within the Ascend platform.

1. Inline suggestions - Otto will offer intelligent code suggestions as you write and edit code within your Workspace. With context-aware understanding of your existing code and data, Otto's suggestions help you build faster and more accurately. To accept Otto's suggestions, simply press the Tab key.
2. Natural language chat - Ask Otto questions about your pipelines and data using the chat feature. You can ask Otto to build new Components, edit existing ones, analyze run history, document your Flows, and more. Otto is accessible from the sidebar in your Ascend workspace.

To collaborate with Otto:

• Click the sparkles ✨ icon in the top bar to launch Otto's chat interface
• Type your questions, requests, or describe challenges in plain, conversational language
• Respond to Otto's contextual suggestions that appear when relevant to your current task
• You can access your previous conversations through the chat history and start new chats when needed

3. Custom Agents - Build your own custom Agents to specialize in tasks unique to your data pipelines and operations. You can interact with these Agents within the chat bar of the Ascend platform or use Automations to program custom Agents to take actions at regular intervals or based on system events.
4. Background Agents - Otto is always at work for you behind the scenes taking on routine tasks so you don't have to. A perfect example of this is automatic Git commit messages where Otto automatically generates meaningful Git commit messages based on your changes, eliminating the need to manually describe your work. Other Agents similarly operate autonomously to monitor pipelines and more.

Otto's interface is designed to be intuitive and non-intrusive, providing help when you need it without disrupting your workflow.

Integration with the Ascend platform

Otto works seamlessly with all aspects of the Ascend platform:

• Components: Otto understands different Component types and provides tailored assistance for each
• Flows: Otto can analyze Flow structures to offer insights and optimization suggestions
• Data Planes: Otto is knowledgeable about various Data Planes and their specific requirements
• Projects: Otto helps maintain consistency across Projects and assists with Project management

By understanding the relationships between these elements, Otto provides contextual assistance that considers your entire data engineering environment.

Otto's Expeditions

Otto is also the Founder and CGO (Chief Goat Officer) of Otto's Expeditions, where he crafts unforgettable mountain adventures that are anything but baah-ring! Otto's expert Guides lead valued customers (affectionately known as "Ascenders") on extraordinary journeys discovering local goat cultures.

This playful side of Otto's personality reflects Ascend's approach to making data engineering delightful. Just as Otto's Expeditions guide customers through challenging terrain, Otto the AI Agent guides you through the complexities of data engineering with expertise and a touch of humor.

Next steps

Now that you've learned about Otto's capabilities, you can start exploring how to integrate AI assistance into your data engineering workflows. Check out the custom Agents and rules documentation to customize your experience, or dive into the Slack integration to enhance team collaboration.