Load Cisco Crosswork NSO data to DuckDB

Cisco Crosswork NSO REST API provides a RESTCONF-compliant interface for managing network services and orchestration via the Crosswork Network Controller or directly through NSO. Everything needed to build a working Cisco Crosswork NSO → DuckDB pipeline is on this page: the API's base URL, authentication, endpoints, pagination and incremental field — plus a prompt that hands the whole job to your coding agent.

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Build your Cisco Crosswork NSO to DuckDB pipeline

Paste this prompt into Claude, Codex, or Cursor. The agent does the rest.

PromptCopy prompt
Run uvx dlthub-init@latest to build a pipeline from Cisco Crosswork NSO to DuckDB and run it on dltHub

That scaffolds a dltHub workspace and installs the dltHub AI harness — the project rules, the secrets-management skill, and the dlt MCP server your agent needs to work safely. From there it reads the Cisco Crosswork NSO API, proposes the endpoints to load, then writes, runs and validates the pipeline while you review rather than type. Credentials are inspected through MCP tools, so your agent never reads secrets.toml itself. How the LLM-native workflow works →

Prefer to write it yourself? Every fact the agent uses is below.

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Cisco Crosswork NSO API at a glance

These values come from the Cisco Crosswork NSO API reference — the authoritative source if anything here looks out of date.

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How do I authenticate with the Cisco Crosswork NSO API?

When accessed via Crosswork Network Controller (CNC), authenticate using the CNC SSO server to obtain a JWT, which must be passed in the 'Authorization' header as a Bearer token (e.g., 'Authorization: Bearer {JWT}'). For direct NSO RESTCONF API access, HTTP Basic authentication is standard.

1. Get your credentials

Cisco Crosswork (CNC) uses a two-step authentication process to obtain a JSON Web Token (JWT), which is then used as a bearer token for API calls. First, perform a POST request to the Single Sign-On (SSO) server at https://{cnc_host}:{cnc_port}/crosswork/sso/v1/tickets with a payload of username={username}&password={password} to obtain a Ticket Granting Ticket (TGT). Second, use the TGT to request a JWT by performing a POST request to https://{cnc_host}:{cnc_port}/crosswork/sso/v1/tickets/jwt with a payload of tgt={TGT}&service={service_url}. The resulting jwttoken is used as the Bearer token in the Authorization header for all subsequent API requests. Note that NSO standalone RESTCONF uses standard HTTP Basic Authentication (username:password).

2. Add them to .dlt/secrets.toml

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[sources.cisco_crosswork_nso_source]
cnc_host = "your_cnc_host"
cnc_port = "your_cnc_port"
username = "your_username"
password = "your_password"
# Alternatively, if using a pre-obtained token
# access_token = "your_jwt_token_here"

dlt reads this file automatically at runtime. With the harness, the setup-secrets skill prompts you for the values and never handles the raw credential in chat. For production, see setting up credentials with dlt.

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What Cisco Crosswork NSO data can I load into DuckDB?

These are the Cisco Crosswork NSO endpoints dlt can load into DuckDB:

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How do I load only new Cisco Crosswork NSO records?

Cisco Crosswork NSO exposes offset on restconf/data/tailf-ncs:devices, so dlt can request only the records that changed since the last run. Set it as the cursor_path and dlt tracks the high-water mark for you between runs.

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{"name": "devices", "endpoint": {
    "path": "restconf/data/tailf-ncs:devices",
    "data_selector": "tailf-ncs:devices",
    "incremental": {"cursor_path": "offset", "initial_value": "2024-01-01T00:00:00Z"},
}}

On the first run dlt loads everything from initial_value; on every run after that it requests only what changed and appends with write_disposition="merge" if you set a primary key. See incremental loading.

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What does the generated Cisco Crosswork NSO pipeline look like?

A standard dlt REST API pipeline — the same code you would write by hand, loading '/crosswork/proxy/nso/restconf/data and /crosswork/proxy/nso/restconf/data/ietf-restconf-monitoring:restconf-state/streams' from the Cisco Crosswork NSO API into DuckDB:

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import dlt
from dlt.sources.rest_api import RESTAPIConfig, rest_api_resources

@dlt.source
def cisco_crosswork_nso_source(api_key=dlt.secrets.value):
    config: RESTAPIConfig = {
        "client": {
            "base_url": "https://{cnc_host}:{cnc_port}/crosswork/proxy/nso/restconf/",
            "auth": {"type": "bearer", "token": api_key},
        },
        "resources": [
            {"name": "devices", "endpoint": {"path": "restconf/data/tailf-ncs:devices", "data_selector": "tailf-ncs:devices"}},
            {"name": "services", "endpoint": {"path": "restconf/data/tailf-ncs:services", "data_selector": "tailf-ncs:services"}}
        ],
    }
    yield from rest_api_resources(config)


def load_cisco_crosswork_nso_to_duckdb() -> None:
    pipeline = dlt.pipeline(
        pipeline_name="cisco_crosswork_nso_pipeline",
        destination="duckdb",
        dataset_name="cisco_crosswork_nso_data",
    )
    load_info = pipeline.run(cisco_crosswork_nso_source())
    print(load_info)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    load_cisco_crosswork_nso_to_duckdb()

Run it with python cisco_crosswork_nso_pipeline.py. The agent iterates on this until it loads cleanly — you review and approve, rather than write it from scratch.

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How do I query Cisco Crosswork NSO data in DuckDB?

dlt creates one table per resource. Query the loaded data with Python or SQL — or ask your agent to, through the MCP server's execute_sql_query tool.

Python (pandas DataFrame):

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import dlt

data = dlt.pipeline("cisco_crosswork_nso_pipeline").dataset()
df = data.devices.df()
print(df.head())

SQL:

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SELECT * FROM cisco_crosswork_nso_data.devices LIMIT 10;

See querying your data with dataset and exploring it in marimo notebooks.

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How do I deploy the Cisco Crosswork NSO to DuckDB pipeline in production?

The pipeline runs locally, which is ideal for prototyping and one-off analysis. When you need it on a schedule, monitored on every load, and shared with your team, deploy the same dlt code on the dltHub platform — no infrastructure to maintain. The prompt above already ends with "run it on dltHub", so your agent can take it there directly.

• Deploy & schedule — run the pipeline as a managed job with automatic retries.
• Monitor — observable job queues, alerting, and load metrics for every run.
• Transform — promote raw Cisco Crosswork NSO loads into governed, documented models.
• Visualize & share — explore data in notebooks and publish live dashboards instead of static screenshots.

Book a demo →

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What other destinations can I load Cisco Crosswork NSO data to?

dlt loads into any of these — only the destination argument changes:

Set dlt.pipeline(destination="snowflake") and add credentials in .dlt/secrets.toml. On the dltHub platform the same pipeline runs against a managed Iceberg lakehouse. See the full destinations list.

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Next steps

• Ready for production? Book a demo of the dltHub platform →
• dlt LLM-native workflow docs
• REST API source reference
• Join the dlt community on Slack