Project files

Let’s talk a bit about the files in the Dagster Essentials course. The dagster_university/dagster_essentials directory should look something like this:

dagster_university/dagster_essentials
├── Makefile
├── README.md
├── dagster_cloud.yaml
├── dagster_essentials
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── assets
│   │   ├── __init__.py
│   │   ├── constants.py
│   │   ├── metrics.py
│   │   └── trips.py
│   ├── completed
│   │   └── ...
│   ├── definitions.py
│   ├── jobs.py
│   ├── partitions.py
│   ├── resources.py
│   ├── schedules.py
│   └── sensors.py
├── dagster_essentials_tests
│   └── ...
├── data
│   ├── outputs
│   ├── raw
│   ├── requests
│   └── staging
├── env.example
├── pyproject.toml
├── pytest.ini
└── uv.lock

We’re only going to touch on a handful of files for now, but later lessons will go over additional files in more detail.

The columns in the following table are as follows:

File/Directory - The name of the file/directory
Context - The reason the file/directory is in the project. Indicates that the file/directory is:
- Dagster - Found in every Dagster project
- Dagster U - Specifically for the project you will build during Dagster University
- Python - Highly recommended as software engineering and Python best practices, but not technically required by Dagster
Description - A description of what the file/directory contains or what it’s used for

File/Directory	Context	Description
`README.md`	Python	A description and starter guide for the Dagster project.
`dagster_essentials/`	Dagster U	Contains the files we will be working with during the course.
`dagster_essentials/completed`	Dagster U	Finished code for each lesson of the course.
`dagster_essentials_tests/`	Dagster U	A Python module that contains unit tests for the completed code.
`data/`	Dagster U	This directory (and directories within it) is where you’ll store the data assets you’ll make during this course. In production settings, this could be Amazon S3 or a data warehouse.
`.env.example`	Python	A text file containing pre-configured environment variables. We’ll talk more about this file in Lesson 6, when we cover connecting to external services.
`pyproject.toml`	Python	A file that specifies package core metadata in a static, tool-agnostic way. This file includes a `tool.dagster` section which references the Python module with your Dagster definitions defined and discoverable at the top level. This allows you to use the `dagster dev` command to load your Dagster code without any parameters.
`pytest.ini`	Python	The pytest.ini file is a configuration file for pytest that allows you to define test settings, such as command-line options, markers, and plugin configurations.
`uv.lock`	Python	In Python, `uv.lock` is a file used by the package manager uv to lock dependencies, similar to `poetry.lock` or `requirements.txt`, ensuring reproducible installations.

For more info about the other files in your Dagster project, check out the Project file reference in the Dagster Docs.