Timothy Spann

Posted on Mar 16

All Data and AI Weekly #233-16March2026

#llm #mcp #agenticai #ai

All Data and AI Weekly #233-16March2026

( AI, Data, NiFi, Iceberg, Polaris, Streamlit, Flink, Kafka, Python, Java, SQL, MCP, LLM, RAG, Cortex AI, AISQL, Search, Unstructured Data )

Tim's Corner: Conferences and Custom Skills

What a week! I had the pleasure of speaking at both MCP Conference NYC and LLM Day over the past two weeks. The energy around agentic AI and Model Context Protocol is incredible - developers are building amazing things with Cortex Code custom skills and MCP integrations. This week we're diving deep into catalog-linked databases, multi-location resilience, and the explosion of tools for building AI agents. Let's go!

Tim's Content

Recent Presentations

MCP Conference NYC (March 11) - Gilberto and I presented on building agentic AI applications with real-time data pipelines.

I also spoke at LLM Day NYC the previous week on stateful AI agents in Snowflake.

New Repositories

Repository	Description
dbtprojectsexample	Example dbt projects for Snowflake
SNACKAI-CoCo-DBT-MTAPipeline	SNACK-AI pipeline with Cortex Code and dbt integration
SNACKAI-CoCo-Meshtastic Dashboard	Meshtastic IoT dashboard with SNACK-AI

Upcoming Events: Catch Tim Live!

March 18: Data for Breakfast Princeton - Princeton
March 19: Warsaw IT Days - Virtual
March 24: NYC Snowflake Users Group - NYC Hands on Workshop
April 14: D4BNA - Virtual US
April 15: Nodes AI Conference - Virtual
April 13-17: D4BV - Virtual APAC
May 20: Budapest Data and AI - Budapest, Hungary - Tim Virtual speaking

All Snowflake Events: https://www.snowflake.com/about/events/

Featured: Catalog-Linked Databases with Cortex Code CLI

The Snowflake engineering team published a comprehensive guide on using Catalog-Linked Databases with the Cortex Code CLI for Apache Iceberg workflows. This enables seamless integration between external Iceberg catalogs and Snowflake's AI capabilities.

Key Capabilities:

Connect to external Iceberg catalogs (AWS Glue, Polaris, etc.)
Query Iceberg tables directly from Cortex Code
Build AI pipelines on open table formats
Maintain full interoperability with other query engines

Snowflake Platform Updates

Release 10.9 Highlights

The latest Snowflake 10.9 release brings numerous improvements across the platform.

Release Notes: https://docs.snowflake.com/en/release-notes/2026/10_9

Multi-Location Resilience for Data Pipelines (GA - Mar 12)

Multi-location resilience for data pipelines is now Generally Available, enabling automatic failover and high availability for mission-critical data workflows.

Documentation:

Recent Cortex Search Improvements (Mar 12)

New enhancements to Cortex Search including improved relevance ranking and expanded document support.

Cortex AI & Agents

From Zero to Agents Guide

Comprehensive quickstart guide for building AI agents from scratch with Snowflake Cortex.

Resources:

Cortex Agents Resource Budgets

New documentation on setting resource budgets for Cortex Agents to control costs and manage compute allocation.

Documentation: https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/snowflake-cortex/cortex-agents-resource-budgets

Managing Cortex Agents

Updated guide on modifying and managing deployed Cortex Agents.

Documentation: https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/snowflake-cortex/cortex-agents-manage#label-snowflake-agents-modify-agents

Cortex Code Custom Skills

Deep dive into building custom skills for Cortex Code extensibility.

Documentation: https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/cortex-code/extensibility#extensibility-skills

Dash Cortex Code Skills

Dashboard and examples for Cortex Code Skills development.

GitHub: https://github.com/Snowflake-Labs/dash-cortex-code-skills

ROI of Generative & Agentic AI

Snowflake published extensive research on the ROI of generative and agentic AI implementations, showing radical returns for organizations embracing AI-native architectures.

Resources:

Semantic Views & Intelligence

Why We Need Semantic Views

Engineering deep dive explaining the rationale behind Semantic Views and how they bridge the gap between raw data and business understanding.

Semantic Views for Power BI

Integration guide for using Snowflake Semantic Views with Power BI for consistent business metrics across BI tools.

GitHub: https://github.com/alexfrancisross/snowflake-semantic-views-powerbi

Snowflake Intelligence for Manufacturers

How manufacturers are leveraging Snowflake Intelligence for actionable data insights across their operations.

From the Community: Medium & Blogs

Article	Author	Description
Spec-Driven Development in Snowflake Cortex Code	Snowflake	Applying SDLC rigor to AI-assisted workflows
Snowflake is Cheaper & Faster Than Databricks Serverless	Nick Akincilar	Real-world cost and performance comparison
From Self-Service BI to Autonomous Intelligence	Snowflake	Architecting next-gen data platforms
Playing with Snowflake Managed MCP	Snowflake	Hands-on guide to managed MCP services
Cortex Code Decoded: Custom Skills	Maseed Ilyas	Teaching your agent new tricks with custom skills

Data Sharing & Open Table Formats

Snowflake's vision for data sharing with open table formats - enabling seamless data exchange while maintaining openness and interoperability.

Quickstarts & Guides

Agentic AI for Asset Management

Build AI agents for quantitative asset management workflows with Snowflake.

GitHub: https://github.com/Snowflake-Labs/sfguide-agentic-ai-for-asset-management

Quantitative Research with AI Functions

Guide to using AI Functions and Cortex Code for quantitative research workflows.

OpenRouteService Native App

Deploy OpenRouteService as a Snowflake Native App for geospatial routing.

Guide: https://www.snowflake.com/en/developers/guides/oss-install-openrouteservice-native-app/

Customer Support Intelligence with AI

Build intelligent customer support systems using Snowflake AI capabilities.

GitHub: https://github.com/ootejreddy/Customer_Support_Intelligence_Using_AI/tree/dev

Ontology on Snowflake

Framework for building ontology-based data models on Snowflake.

GitHub: https://github.com/sfc-gh-tjia/ontology-on-snowflake/

Flux Utility Solutions

Utility solutions for Flux workflows on Snowflake.

GitHub: https://github.com/sfc-gh-abannerjee/flux-utility-solutions

Claude & AI Tools

Claude 1M Context (GA)

Anthropic announced 1 million token context window is now generally available for Claude, enabling massive document processing.

Chrome DevTools MCP

Debug your browser sessions with MCP integration in Chrome DevTools.

Claude Code Tool Manager

Manage and organize tools for Claude Code workflows.

GitHub: https://github.com/tylergraydev/claude-code-tool-manager

Claude Codex Settings

Configuration and settings manager for Claude Codex.

GitHub: https://github.com/fcakyon/claude-codex-settings

Agent & MCP Tools

Tool	Description
Agent Safehouse	Secure environment for AI agent development and testing
Agency Agents	Framework for building multi-agent systems
Understudy AI	AI assistant training and deployment platform
PyCoClaw	Python toolkit for AI agent development

Developer Tools

Browsers & Scraping

Tool	Description
Lightpanda Browser	Lightweight headless browser for AI agents
Firecrawl	Turn websites into LLM-ready markdown

Code & Search

Tool	Description
TinyCode	Minimal code editor
Greppy	Enhanced grep for code search
Goal-MD	Goal-oriented markdown for project planning
QMD	Quick markdown utilities

PDF & Documents

Tool	Description
TinyPDF	Lightweight PDF processing library

Voice & Audio

Tool	Description
NeuTTS	Neural text-to-speech synthesis

Security & Privacy

Tool	Description
Yopass	Secure secret sharing
OpenClaw	Open-source security tools
Shadowbroker	Security research tools

Git & Version Control

Tool	Description
Git Truck	Visualize git repository structure

Hardware & IoT

Tool	Description
Bjorn	IoT device management

IDE Extensions

Duck Code Pro

AI-powered coding assistant for VS Code.

Marketplace: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Duckcode.duck-code-pro

Industry Spotlight

Booking.com AI & Data Strategy

How Booking.com uses AI and data to create connected trip experiences for customers.

SNACK-AI: The 2026 Pattern

As we look forward in 2026, SNACK-AI is the architectural pattern for powering AI applications at any scale - from mobile phones and robots to massive enterprise clusters.

SNACK-AI integrates: