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A common use of content as code is copying a dashboard from one place to another — from a project on one Lightdash instance to a project on another instance, or between two projects on the same instance. The steps below walk through the full round-trip. To move a dashboard between two projects on the same instance where one is configured as the other’s upstream, promoting content does the same job from the UI, without the CLI. Example scenario: you want to copy a dashboard from a project on your dedicated instance (acme.lightdash.cloud) to a project on app.lightdash.cloud.

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Before you start

  • Install the Lightdash CLI.
  • Check that the target project has the same dbt models and explores that the dashboard’s charts reference. If they don’t match, the upload fails validation.

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Step 1: Download from the source project

Log in to the source instance, select the source project, then download the dashboard. Charts, virtual views, and data apps referenced by the dashboard are pulled automatically.
Or specify the project UUID directly instead of selecting interactively:
If the dashboard uses pivoted charts, add --strip-pivot-series so the chart YAML doesn’t hardcode pivot values from the source project:
See Make downloaded charts portable across projects for details.

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Step 2: Upload to the target project

If the target project is on a different instance, log in to it first, then select the project and upload:
Or specify the project UUID directly:
If the target project is on the same instance, skip the login step — select the target project and upload:
--force is required to create content that doesn’t already exist in the target project, and --validate checks for errors after the upload finishes. For which dependencies travel automatically and which need a flag, see What download and upload include.