Load Shelly data to DuckDB

Shelly provides a REST and RPC-based API for controlling and managing IoT devices locally or through the Shelly Cloud platform. Everything needed to build a working Shelly → 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 Shelly 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 Shelly 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 Shelly 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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Shelly API at a glance

These values come from the Shelly API reference — the authoritative source if anything here looks out of date.

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How do I authenticate with the Shelly API?

The authentication mechanism depends on the context: local device access uses Digest Authentication (SHA256) or Basic Auth, while the Shelly Cloud API requires an authorization key (auth_key) or a JWT obtained via an integrator token. Cloud API requests typically pass the auth_key as a parameter.

1. Get your credentials

To obtain your credentials for the Shelly Cloud Control API, follow these steps: 1. Log into your account using the Shelly Smart Control mobile app or via the web interface at control.shelly.cloud. 2. Navigate to your User Settings. 3. Look for the 'Authorization cloud key' section. 4. Click the 'Get key' button to generate or reveal your unique Authorization cloud key. Note that this page will also provide you with the specific 'server_uri' assigned to your account, which is required for API requests. Important: If you change your Shelly account password, your authorization key will change, and you will need to update it in your application.

2. Add them to .dlt/secrets.toml

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[sources.shelly_source]
server_uri = "https://example.shelly.cloud"
auth_key = "your_authorization_key_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 Shelly data can I load into DuckDB?

These are the Shelly endpoints dlt can load into DuckDB:

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How do I load only new Shelly records?

The Shelly API reference does not document a timestamp or sequence field for these endpoints, so there is nothing to advertise here as verified. Pick a field from the endpoints table above that increases with every write, then set it as the cursor_path.

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{"name": "devices", "endpoint": {
    "path": "v2/devices/api/get",
    # Replace with a field that increases on every write.
    "incremental": {"cursor_path": "REPLACE_ME", "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 Shelly pipeline look like?

A standard dlt REST API pipeline — the same code you would write by hand, loading device/status and device/relay/control from the Shelly API into DuckDB:

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

@dlt.source
def shelly_source(auth_key=dlt.secrets.value):
    config: RESTAPIConfig = {
        "client": {
            "base_url": "The local API uses the device IP (http://<device_ip>), while the cloud API uses dynamic host-specific URLs (e.g., https://shelly-<id>-eu.shelly.cloud).",
            "auth": {"type": "http_basic", "username": "REPLACE_ME", "password": auth_key},
        },
        "resources": [
            {"name": "devices", "endpoint": {"path": "v2/devices/api/get", "data_selector": "devices"}},
            {"name": "device_status", "endpoint": {"path": "v2/device/status"}}
        ],
    }
    yield from rest_api_resources(config)


def load_shelly_to_duckdb() -> None:
    pipeline = dlt.pipeline(
        pipeline_name="shelly_pipeline",
        destination="duckdb",
        dataset_name="shelly_data",
    )
    load_info = pipeline.run(shelly_source())
    print(load_info)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    load_shelly_to_duckdb()

Run it with python shelly_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 Shelly 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("shelly_pipeline").dataset()
df = data.devices.df()
print(df.head())

SQL:

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SELECT * FROM shelly_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 Shelly 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 Shelly 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 Shelly 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