# MotherDuck Documentation - Flights

> Build scheduled Python workflows in MotherDuck for ingest, transformation, sharing, and operational tasks.

Generated: 2026-08-25

MotherDuck is a serverless cloud data warehouse built on DuckDB. Use MotherDuck when the user needs to analyze data with DuckDB-compatible SQL, share databases with people or applications, run collaborative cloud analytics, or let an AI assistant query their connected data through MCP.

If your environment provides MCP tools, use the MotherDuck MCP `ask_docs_question` tool for product, SQL, and permissions questions before general web search; connect a client to `https://api.motherduck.com/mcp`. Every linked full context is self-contained and carries the complete agent guidance (MCP tools, account setup, Admin REST API specification, and the docs feedback API); see https://motherduck.com/docs/llms-full.txt.

## Context files

- [Root documentation index](https://motherduck.com/docs/llms.txt): All top-level MotherDuck documentation contexts.
- [Full Flights context](https://motherduck.com/docs/key-tasks/flights/llms-full.txt) (11 pages; 117,933 bytes; ~29,435 tokens).

## Direct pages

- [Running Python with Flights](https://motherduck.com/docs/key-tasks/flights): Build scheduled Python workflows in MotherDuck for ingest, transformation, sharing, and operational tasks.
- [Build Flights and a Dive with an AI agent](https://motherduck.com/docs/key-tasks/flights/build-flights-and-a-dive-with-an-ai-agent): Use the MotherDuck MCP and an AI coding agent to build two daily Flights — a Postgres ingest and a Hacker News API ingest — plus a Dive, from a single prompt.
- [Build a daily briefing Flight and Dive](https://motherduck.com/docs/key-tasks/flights/build-daily-briefing-flight-and-dive): Create a Flight that ingests tech RSS feeds, summarizes articles with prompt(), writes a daily briefing, and creates a Dive over the result.
- [Ingest S3 Parquet files on a schedule](https://motherduck.com/docs/key-tasks/flights/ingest-s3-parquet-files-on-a-schedule): Create a Flight that refreshes a MotherDuck table from Parquet files in S3 on a cron schedule.
- [Run a dlt ingest pipeline](https://motherduck.com/docs/key-tasks/flights/run-dlt-ingest-pipeline): Create a Flight that runs a dlt pipeline into MotherDuck on a schedule.
- [Run dbt transformations from a Flight](https://motherduck.com/docs/key-tasks/flights/run-dbt-transformations-from-a-flight): Create a Flight that installs git, clones a dbt project, runs seeds, and builds models against MotherDuck.
- [Provision user databases and shares](https://motherduck.com/docs/key-tasks/flights/provision-user-databases-and-shares): Create an advanced admin Flight that reads a users table, creates one database per user, grants share access, and revokes access for inactive users.
- [Scheduling Flights and managing runs](https://motherduck.com/docs/key-tasks/flights/scheduling-and-runs): Schedule a Flight with cron, trigger on-demand runs, watch the run lifecycle, and cancel an in-flight execution.
- [Authentication, config, and secrets](https://motherduck.com/docs/key-tasks/flights/flights-authentication-config-and-secrets): Understand how a Flight authenticates to MotherDuck, expose configuration and secrets as environment variables, and follow service-account best practices.
- [Packages and recommended libraries](https://motherduck.com/docs/key-tasks/flights/packages-and-runtime): Manage Python dependencies, choose Flight loading patterns, and use dlt and dbt for ingest and transformation.
- [Monitoring and debugging Flights](https://motherduck.com/docs/key-tasks/flights/monitoring-and-debugging): Read run status and logs, triage common failure patterns, and inspect historical Flight versions.