Motherduck Migrate To Motherduck

---
name: motherduck-migrate-to-motherduck
description: Plan a migration onto MotherDuck. Use when moving from Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, PostgreSQL, dbt-heavy stacks, or lakehouse tooling and the key decisions are target pattern, cutover slices, source-vs-target validation, rollback, and native-versus-DuckLake posture.
license: MIT
---

# Migrate to MotherDuck

Use this skill when the user needs a migration plan from another warehouse, PostgreSQL estate, or mixed analytics stack onto MotherDuck.

This is a use-case skill. It orchestrates `motherduck-connect`, `motherduck-explore`, `motherduck-load-data`, `motherduck-model-data`, `motherduck-query`, and `motherduck-ducklake`.

## Start Here: Is a MotherDuck Server Active?

Always determine this before writing a migration plan.

- If a **remote MotherDuck MCP server** or **local MotherDuck server** is active, use it.
- Ask which MotherDuck database or workspace will receive the migration if the user has not specified it.
- Explore the live target side first when available:
  - existing databases and schemas
  - current landing zones
  - current analytical tables
  - naming conventions
  - any partial migration already in place
… install to load the full skill