Getting started

This page takes you from the installer to your first query, notebook and dashboard in about ten minutes.

Install

1. Download ChakyBricks_1.0.0_x64-setup.exe from the latest release and run it.
2. If Windows shows "Windows protected your PC", click More info, then Run anyway. The installer is not code-signed yet.
3. Start ChakyBricks from the Start menu.

ChakyBricks needs Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit) with WebView2, which is part of current Windows. It ships its own Python, so you don't need to install anything else. See Known limitations for what version 1.0 does not do.

The window

A narrow rail on the left switches between the main areas. The same shortcuts work from anywhere:

Area	Shortcut	What it is
Home	Ctrl+1	Quick actions and recent tables
Catalog	Ctrl+2	Your schemas and tables
SQL	Ctrl+3	SQL editor
Notebooks	Ctrl+4	Python, SQL and Markdown notebooks
Dashboards	Ctrl+5	Dashboards
Jobs	Ctrl+6	Scheduled notebooks and queries
Settings	Ctrl+7	Preferences, packages and shortcuts

Press Ctrl+K for the command palette: it jumps to any area, starts an import and opens any table. The theme (light, dark or follow Windows) is in Settings.

Your first table

1. On Home, choose Import data (or use the button on the Catalog page).
2. Pick a CSV, Parquet, JSON or Excel file. The wizard shows a preview and the detected column types; adjust them if needed, then start the import. See Importing data.
3. The table appears in the Catalog, under the main schema unless you chose another one.

Try it without your own data

Open Dashboards and click Sample dashboard. ChakyBricks generates a 200,000-row sales table called main.demo_sales and a ready-made dashboard on it, which is a good way to try SQL, notebooks and dashboards right away.

Your first query

Open SQL (Ctrl+3) and run:

SELECT region, count(*) AS orders
FROM demo_sales
GROUP BY region
ORDER BY orders DESC

Press Ctrl+Enter to run. Tables in the main schema can be used without a schema prefix; tables in other schemas are written schema.table. More in SQL editor.

Your first notebook

Open Notebooks, create a notebook and run a Python cell:

df = cb.sql("SELECT region, sum(revenue) AS revenue FROM demo_sales GROUP BY 1")
df

cb is available in every notebook without importing it. cb.sql returns a Polars DataFrame, which the notebook shows as a table. See Python notebooks.

Where your data lives

Everything is stored in your workspace folder, by default %APPDATA%\ChakyBricks. You can change it in Settings → Workspace folder. See Settings and Python packages.