Load RNAcentral data to DuckDB

RNAcentral is a comprehensive database of non-coding RNA sequences that provides a RESTful API for programmatic access to sequence data and metadata. Everything needed to build a working RNAcentral → 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 RNAcentral 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 RNAcentral 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 RNAcentral 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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RNAcentral API at a glance

These values come from the RNAcentral API reference — the authoritative source if anything here looks out of date.

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How do I authenticate with the RNAcentral API?

The API is public and does not require authentication; no API keys or tokens are needed for requests.

No credentials required. The RNAcentral API is public, so there is nothing to obtain and nothing to add to .dlt/secrets.toml — the pipeline above runs as written.

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What RNAcentral data can I load into DuckDB?

These are the RNAcentral endpoints dlt can load into DuckDB:

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How do I load only new RNAcentral records?

RNAcentral exposes page on api/v1/rna/, 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": "rna", "endpoint": {
    "path": "api/v1/rna/",
    "data_selector": "results",
    "incremental": {"cursor_path": "page", "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 RNAcentral pipeline look like?

A standard dlt REST API pipeline — the same code you would write by hand, loading /api/v1/rna/ and /api/v1/search/ from the RNAcentral API into DuckDB:

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

@dlt.source
def rnacentral_source():
    config: RESTAPIConfig = {
        "client": {
            "base_url": "https://rnacentral.org/api/v1",
        },
        "resources": [
            {"name": "rna", "endpoint": {"path": "api/v1/rna/", "data_selector": "results"}},
            {"name": "search", "endpoint": {"path": "api/v1/search/", "data_selector": "results"}}
        ],
    }
    yield from rest_api_resources(config)


def load_rnacentral_to_duckdb() -> None:
    pipeline = dlt.pipeline(
        pipeline_name="rnacentral_pipeline",
        destination="duckdb",
        dataset_name="rnacentral_data",
    )
    load_info = pipeline.run(rnacentral_source())
    print(load_info)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    load_rnacentral_to_duckdb()

Run it with python rnacentral_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 RNAcentral 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("rnacentral_pipeline").dataset()
df = data.rna.df()
print(df.head())

SQL:

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SELECT * FROM rnacentral_data.rna LIMIT 10;

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

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How do I deploy the RNAcentral 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 RNAcentral 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 RNAcentral 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