v0.16.0 — stronger safety checks and explicit CI errors

dbt-plan v0.16.0 — stronger safety checks and explicit CI errors

This release expands analysis and changes the CLI error contract. Read the upgrade
notes before updating CI consumers from 0.15.x.

Breaking changes

• Execution failures exit 3. Completed destructive findings still exit 1 and
  review findings still use warning_exit_code (default 2). Invalid arguments,
  unreadable configuration, missing required inputs, compile failures and recovery
  failures cannot be accepted as completed warning reports.
• Exit code 3 is reserved. Change any warning_exit_code: 3 configuration
  before upgrading.
• Invalid selections fail. Unknown, empty or unsupported --select terms exit
  3, including a mix of valid and invalid names. Select versioned models with an
  explicit version or compiled file name.

See exit codes and migration
and selection semantics.

Highlights

• Check source and compiled-artifact evidence, including data-test SQL left behind
  by partial compilation. Invalid or incomplete inputs require review.
• Detect snapshot and Python-model changes from manifests, relation/configuration
  changes without SQL edits, and casts added or removed on one side.
• Resolve EXCLUDE/EXCEPT against known columns and preserve readable columns when
  another expression is unknown. Quoted case-sensitive identities remain explicit
  uncertainty rather than being silently folded into a match.
• Follow column losses through ephemeral models; check downstream contracts,
  generic-test predicates and overrides, versioned unit-test inputs, and exposure
  owners. SQL snapshot checks cover complete files, including multiple blocks.
• Show the analysis dialect and baseline revision/time. Use agent-setup --file
  to write guidance to a chosen instruction file.
• Preserve Git worktree/index recovery during run failures, and make generated
  CI install dependencies consistently for uv and requirements.txt projects.

Upgrade notes

1. Handle exit code 3 as an execution failure and review custom warning codes.
2. Check existing selection expressions, especially versioned models.
3. Update package and Action references together. Pin version: '0.16.0' in the
   Action if reproducibility is required; its empty version input installs latest.
4. Regenerate generated workflows to adopt the installation and gating fixes,
   then review project-specific settings. New generated CI defaults to blocking
   destructive findings while allowing completed warnings. Execution errors
   always fail, including when the Action uses fail-on: never.
5. Recompile inputs and review new warnings. Some previously successful checks
   now refuse to claim safety. Existing workflow files are not automatically
   rewritten by a package upgrade.

pip install --upgrade dbt-plan==0.16.0

The Action preserves adapter inference when dialect is empty. JSON reports gain
an analysis object, and text reports show dialect/baseline metadata; consumers
that parse terminal text or reject additional JSON fields should check their parser.

Python DataFrame schemas, live warehouse introspection and full quote-aware column
lineage remain outside this release's analysis. MCP run was deliberately not
added because checkout/stash/compile can conflict with concurrent agent edits.

Verification

Required CI covers Python 3.10–3.14 on Linux and Windows, the minimum sqlglot
version, built packages, real dbt/DuckDB execution, MCP and the composite Action.
The execution tests create incremental targets before testing the second run;
optional integrations and built-package checks must not silently skip in their
required jobs. Snowflake/Postgres behavior was not validated against live warehouses.

Full changelog
· Audit resolutions and review follow-ups

Contributors

Thank you @1cbyc and @insisong for fixing verbose configuration-file loading and adding parsing, precedence and JSON-output regression tests in #229. Your contribution shipped in v0.16.0.