Load Zendesk - Main API data to Snowflake

Zendesk is a customer service and engagement platform providing REST APIs for managing support, CRM, and omnichannel communication data. Everything needed to build a working Zendesk - Main API → Snowflake 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 Zendesk - Main API to Snowflake pipeline

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

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 Zendesk - Main API 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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Zendesk - Main API API at a glance

These values come from the Zendesk - Main API API reference — the authoritative source if anything here looks out of date.

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How do I authenticate with the Zendesk - Main API API?

Zendesk supports Basic authentication for API tokens (using '{email_address}/token:{api_token}' encoded in Base64) and Bearer token authentication for OAuth access tokens. The required header for both is 'Authorization'.

1. Get your credentials

To generate API credentials, log in to the Zendesk Admin Center as an administrator. Navigate to Apps and integrations > APIs > API configuration, enable Allow API token access, and save. Then, navigate to Apps and integrations > APIs > Zendesk API (or 'API tokens'), click Add API token, enter a description, and save. Copy the generated token immediately as it will not be shown again. Note that Zendesk is migrating away from API tokens toward OAuth access tokens, with full deprecation scheduled for April 30, 2027.

2. Add them to .dlt/secrets.toml

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[sources.zendesk_main_api_source]
subdomain = "your_subdomain"
email = "your_email_address"
api_token = "your_api_token"

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 Zendesk - Main API data can I load into Snowflake?

These are the Zendesk - Main API endpoints dlt can load into Snowflake:

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How do I load only new Zendesk - Main API records?

Zendesk - Main API exposes cursor on api/v2/incremental/tickets/cursor.json, 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": "incremental_tickets_cursor", "endpoint": {
    "path": "api/v2/incremental/tickets/cursor.json",
    "data_selector": "tickets",
    "incremental": {"cursor_path": "cursor", "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 Zendesk - Main API pipeline look like?

A standard dlt REST API pipeline — the same code you would write by hand, loading tickets and search from the Zendesk - Main API API into Snowflake:

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

@dlt.source
def zendesk_main_api_source(api_token=dlt.secrets.value):
    config: RESTAPIConfig = {
        "client": {
            "base_url": "https://{subdomain}.zendesk.com/api/v2",
            "auth": {"type": "http_basic", "username": "REPLACE_ME", "password": api_token},
        },
        "resources": [
            {"name": "incremental_tickets_cursor", "endpoint": {"path": "api/v2/incremental/tickets/cursor.json", "data_selector": "tickets"}},
            {"name": "incremental_tickets", "endpoint": {"path": "api/v2/incremental/tickets.json", "data_selector": "tickets"}}
        ],
    }
    yield from rest_api_resources(config)


def load_zendesk_main_api_to_snowflake() -> None:
    pipeline = dlt.pipeline(
        pipeline_name="zendesk_main_api_pipeline",
        destination="snowflake",
        dataset_name="zendesk_main_api_data",
    )
    load_info = pipeline.run(zendesk_main_api_source())
    print(load_info)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    load_zendesk_main_api_to_snowflake()

Run it with uv run python zendesk_main_api_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 Zendesk - Main API data in Snowflake?

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("zendesk_main_api_pipeline").dataset()
df = data.incremental_tickets_cursor.df()
print(df.head())

SQL:

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SELECT * FROM zendesk_main_api_data.incremental_tickets_cursor LIMIT 10;

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

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How do I deploy the Zendesk - Main API to Snowflake 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 Zendesk - Main API 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 Zendesk - Main API 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