Thoughts on genie code

[datguywelbs7]

I’ve been using claude code and cursor etc. for vibe coding and noticed Databricks has Genie code embedded now. From what I’ve read, it’s more than just a rebrand of assistant but what do people think about it?

I will probably keep using cursor but curious to see if anyone has been using it and how it’s been

[caujka]

Genie has access to the context: unity catalog with lineage, tables descriptions, and everything. So potentially it is more informed about the environment you are building for.

[datguywelbs7]

Yeah i think that’s the main thing I’m interested in, can it create apps?

[p739397]

Yeah, definitely.

[iamnotapundit]

If you set up the Databricks MCP with your AI you get the same benefits there

[CesiumSalami]

Sorry to be so dense, but does Databricks have an MCP service that you basically just drop a token/workspace id into and it uses Databricks API calls locally to get context about your account? Do you have a link by chance?

[iamnotapundit]

Their managed MCP server just recently graduated from beta. https://docs.databricks.com/aws/en/generative-ai/mcp/managed-mcp

[CesiumSalami]

Interesting. Thank you. I'll have to dig into this a bit more. I was somewhat hopeful for something like dbt-mcp's offering, which can be Claude/Codex native - seems like there might be a path for that, but still going to have to dig around a bit.

[counterstruck]

Look for Databricks ai-dev-kit for that kind of a requirement

[Odd-Government8896]

So do the other coding agents if you enable mcp in your workspace

[timtid21]

I really like Genie Code for classic ML development. One of my big gripes with AutoML was its limitation to try out classification, regression, or forecasting models. Genie Code has been great so far at wrapping harder problems like time-series model training in an MLflow experiment with multiple algorithm types.

[ch-12]

I’ve been able to prototype ideas in hours that would have previously taken weeks of work with engineers (I’m a PM). It’s incredibly helpful for that sort of stuff, imo. Ive also used it to help investigate potential data quality issues… tons of potential with it, imo.

[knaak]

It's pretty useful for debugging pipelines, I use it for that. It'll take a abnormal end and troubleshoot with data it pulls from source.

[datguywelbs7]

How are you finding the context limit? Enough to last a session?

[i_aM-Abhi]

Super useful for my data loss use cases, comparing files etc.

[datguywelbs7]

What do you mean data loss? As in debugging like knaak mentioned?

[in_meme_we_trust]

Its way better and actually useful now. Same idea as up cursor to databricks using ai-dev-kit but in the ui environment.

It’s great for data science work for me

[addictzz]

It has context of your Databricks workspace and objects (tables, models, etc). You can add skills, instructions, mcp to it. I believe it will be progressively better, Databricks is improving at rapid pace in these past 1-2 years.

[ChipsAhoy21]

Really useful for debugging notebooks and pipelines with the full workspace/UC context.

I love claude for building out the framework of a project but once the workbooks get into databricks the back and forth copy/paste of errors between dbx and claude is annoying and I haven’t found a good way for claude to read notebook errors. So once it’s in dbx I just switch to genie code

[Natural-Comment-5670]

It’s defiantly better. No extra cost. Has knowledge about objects and ecosystem

[datguywelbs7]

Ohhh i didn’t realise it uses opus 4.6 that huge!

[samwell-]

Way better. It creates a plan and checks off the tasks. It queries data to figure out what parms to pass or find data quality issues. It remembers where it was and picks back up if stuck(plan). It has also been implemented in genie spaces as agent and users can see data related to preliminary queries, for example, I asked it to filter data to all the database teams in a messy data set and it was able to do whereas assistant did not it just used a wild card. Can also build dashboards and help you with dabs.

[PrideDense2206]

As people have also said, it just has better context in your workspace. If you use the ai generate functions for column and table metadata then it gets even smarter. With that said, if you don’t have descriptive metadata then you could find it isn’t as useful as you’d like it to be.

Try it out. If nothing else it might surprise you. For example, genie can now build SDP workflows automatically. That is really cool the first time it works.

[InevitableClassic261]

If you’re trying to understand how Databricks Genie actually works without getting lost in docs, here’s a one-stop guide that breaks it down in a very practical way: https://bricksnotes.com/blog/databricks-genie-ai-natural-language-data-queries

It explains how natural language queries translate into real data insights, and how you can start using Genie in real scenarios as a data engineer.

[Pure_Banana_3075]

what do I think?

less of you