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If you have an Evidence Studio account, you don’t need a connection.yaml. Run evidence login and the CLI uses the same data connection as your Studio organization.
This works whether your organization uses the Evidence Warehouse or a direct connection to a warehouse you own (Snowflake, BigQuery, and so on). Queries run through Evidence Studio, so they use the connection, credentials, and access rules your organization has already set up.

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When to use connection.yaml instead

Add a connection.yaml to your project root only if you need one of these:
  • No Evidence Studio account. For example, you self-host Evidence.
  • Different credentials. For example, a development database or your own warehouse role instead of your organization’s.
  • Offline work. The CLI queries your warehouse directly from your machine, without going through Evidence Studio.
If a connection.yaml is present, the CLI always uses it, even when you’re logged in and your organization has a connection. If the file is invalid, queries fail with its error; the CLI does not fall back to your organization’s connection. To use your organization’s connection, delete the file.

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Scaffold with evidence init

The quickest way to create a connection.yaml is to pass --warehouse to evidence init:
This writes a connection.yaml in the project root pre-filled with placeholder values, and adds it to .gitignore (the file holds credentials — keep it out of version control).
connection.yaml and any files it references — the Snowflake private-key .pem or the BigQuery service-account JSON — contain credentials. Never commit them. evidence init --warehouse gitignores connection.yaml for you, but not the referenced key files: add those to .gitignore yourself, or use the inline private_key / keyfile_json fields so there’s no separate file to leak.
Fill in the placeholders with your own connection details. If --warehouse is omitted, no connection.yaml is written and the project uses your Evidence Studio organization’s connection after evidence login.

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Configuration

Provide exactly one of password, private_key, or private_key_path. Paths (private_key_path) are resolved relative to connection.yaml.See the Snowflake direct connector for the full field reference and how to create a read-only Snowflake user.