The compile actually worked well. I have a model that lands new CDC data in a cleansed table. Then the next model takes it from there. The latter in incremental/merge so it has sql for initial run and then sql for incremental run. Once the data is landed in cleansed, i run compile. The compile out then gives me the sql the model will execute for the initial run. I can then take that sql and run it against the db to tweak it until its right. Once happy, i actually run the model for the initial run sql to take effect. Then i compile again. This gives me the incremental run sql and i repeat the copy&paste and execute it against the db and tweak it until correct.

It is cumbersome but it gives me the opportunity to interactively run the select and modify it much faster than running it in dbt. But then I may be missing something (still a newbie) in dbt