Skip to main content
How the CLI gets data depends on how your project is set up.

​
Evidence Warehouse

If you use the Evidence Warehouse, run evidence login. No further setup is needed.

​
Other warehouses

If you use a direct connection to a warehouse you own, add a connection.yaml file to the root of your project. When this file is present, the CLI queries your warehouse directly from your machine — no login required.

​
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 the Evidence Warehouse.

​
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.