lakebase-setup

name	lakebase-setup
description	Configure Lakebase for agent memory storage. Use when: (1) Adding memory capabilities to the agent, (2) 'Failed to connect to Lakebase' errors, (3) Permission errors on checkpoint/store tables, (4) User says 'lakebase', 'memory setup', or 'add memory'.

Lakebase Setup for Agent Persistence

Profile reminder: All databricks CLI commands must include the profile from .env: databricks <command> --profile <profile> or DATABRICKS_CONFIG_PROFILE=<profile> databricks <command>

Two types of Lakebase: Databricks supports provisioned instances (with instance name) and autoscaling instances (project/branch model). This skill covers both. Make sure you know which Lakebase instance the user is using, ask the user which type they are using if unclear.

Use Cases

Lakebase is used for three distinct purposes across the agent templates:

Use case	Templates	Description
Chat UI conversation history	All templates	The built-in chat UI (e2e-chatbot-app-next) can persist conversations across page refreshes and browser sessions. This is purely UI-side persistence — the agent itself is stateless.
Agent short-term memory	agent-langgraph-advanced, agent-openai-advanced	Conversation threads within a session via AsyncCheckpointSaver (LangGraph) or AsyncDatabricksSession (OpenAI SDK). The agent remembers what was said earlier in the same conversation.
Agent long-term memory	agent-langgraph-advanced	User facts across sessions via AsyncDatabricksStore. The agent remembers things about a user from previous conversations.

Note: When the quickstart prompts for Lakebase on a non-memory template, it's for chat UI history only — not for the agent. Memory templates always require Lakebase.

Overview

Lakebase provides persistent PostgreSQL storage for agents:

• Short-term memory (LangGraph): Conversation history within a thread (AsyncCheckpointSaver)
• Long-term memory (LangGraph): User facts across sessions (AsyncDatabricksStore)
• Short-term memory (OpenAI SDK): Conversation history via AsyncDatabricksSession
• Long-running agent persistence (OpenAI SDK): Background task state via custom SQLAlchemy tables (agent_server schema)

Note: For pre-configured memory templates, see:

• agent-langgraph-advanced - Short-term memory, long-term memory, and long-running background tasks (LangGraph)
• agent-openai-advanced - Short-term memory and long-running background tasks (OpenAI SDK)

Complete Setup Workflow

┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  1. Add dependency  →  2. Get instance  →  3. Configure DAB              │
│  4. Configure .env  →  5. Deploy  →  6. Grant SP permissions  →  7. Run  │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Shortcut: If using a pre-configured memory template, uv run quickstart with Lakebase flags handles steps 2-4 automatically. You still need to do steps 5-7 manually.

---

Step 1: Add Memory Dependency

Add the memory extra to your pyproject.toml:

dependencies = [
    "databricks-langchain[memory]",
    # ... other dependencies
]

Then sync dependencies:

uv sync

---

Step 2: Create or Get Lakebase Instance

Option A: Provisioned Instance

1. Go to your Databricks workspace
2. Navigate to Compute → Lakebase
3. Click Create Instance (or use an existing one)
4. Note the instance name

Option B: Autoscaling Instance

Autoscaling uses a project/branch model. You need three values:

• Project name (e.g., my-project)
• Branch name (e.g., my-branch)
• Database ID (e.g., db-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxx)

Find these via the postgres API:

# List projects
databricks api get /api/2.0/postgres/projects --profile <profile>

# List branches for a project
databricks api get /api/2.0/postgres/projects/<project-name>/branches --profile <profile>

# List databases for a branch
databricks api get /api/2.0/postgres/projects/<project-name>/branches/<branch-name>/databases --profile <profile>

Important: The database ID is the internal ID (e.g., db-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxx), NOT databricks_postgres.

---

Step 3: Configure databricks.yml (Lakebase Resource)

Note: If you ran uv run quickstart with Lakebase flags (--lakebase-provisioned-name or --lakebase-autoscaling-endpoint), the quickstart already configured databricks.yml for you — including fetching the database ID for autoscaling. Manual configuration is only needed if you didn't use quickstart or need to change values.

Option A: Provisioned

Add the database resource to your app in databricks.yml:

resources:
  apps:
    your_app:
      name: "your-app-name"
      source_code_path: ./
      resources:
        # ... other resources (experiment, UC functions, etc.) ...

        # Lakebase instance for long-term memory
        - name: 'database'
          database:
            instance_name: '<your-lakebase-instance-name>'
            database_name: 'databricks_postgres'
            permission: 'CAN_CONNECT_AND_CREATE'

Important:

• The instance_name: '<your-lakebase-instance-name>' must match the actual Lakebase instance name
• Using the database resource type automatically grants the app's service principal access to Lakebase See .agents/skills/add-tools/examples/lakebase.yaml for the YAML snippet.

Option B: Autoscaling

Add the postgres resource to your app in databricks.yml:

resources:
  apps:
    your_app:
      name: "your-app-name"
      source_code_path: ./
      resources:
        # ... other resources (experiment, UC functions, etc.) ...

        # Autoscaling Lakebase instance for long-term memory
        - name: 'postgres'
          postgres:
            branch: "projects/<project-name>/branches/<branch-name>"
            database: "projects/<project-name>/branches/<branch-name>/databases/<database-id>"
            permission: 'CAN_CONNECT_AND_CREATE'

Important: The branch and database fields use full resource path format.

See .agents/skills/add-tools/examples/lakebase-autoscaling.yaml for the YAML snippet.

Add Environment Variables to databricks.yml config block

Provisioned:

      config:
        env:
          # Lakebase instance name - resolved from database resource at deploy time
          - name: LAKEBASE_INSTANCE_NAME
            value_from: "database"
          # Static values for embedding configuration
          - name: EMBEDDING_ENDPOINT
            value: "databricks-gte-large-en"
          - name: EMBEDDING_DIMS
            value: "1024"

Autoscaling:

      config:
        env:
          # Autoscaling Lakebase config
          - name: LAKEBASE_AUTOSCALING_PROJECT
            value: "<your-project-name>"
          - name: LAKEBASE_AUTOSCALING_BRANCH
            value: "<your-branch-name>"
          # Static values for embedding configuration
          - name: EMBEDDING_ENDPOINT
            value: "databricks-gte-large-en"
          - name: EMBEDDING_DIMS
            value: "1024"

---

Step 4: Configure .env (Local Development)

For local development, add to .env:

Provisioned:

LAKEBASE_INSTANCE_NAME=<your-instance-name>
EMBEDDING_ENDPOINT=databricks-gte-large-en
EMBEDDING_DIMS=1024

Autoscaling:

LAKEBASE_AUTOSCALING_PROJECT=<your-project-name>
LAKEBASE_AUTOSCALING_BRANCH=<your-branch-name>
EMBEDDING_ENDPOINT=databricks-gte-large-en
EMBEDDING_DIMS=1024

Important: embedding_dims must match the embedding endpoint:

Endpoint	Dimensions
databricks-gte-large-en	1024
databricks-bge-large-en	1024

Note: .env is only for local development. When deployed, the app gets values from databricks.yml config env.

---

Step 5: Initialize Tables

Step 5: Deploy

Deploy the app so the service principal and resources are created:

DATABRICKS_CONFIG_PROFILE=<profile> databricks bundle deploy

---

Step 6: Grant SP Permissions (CRITICAL)

WARNING: You MUST complete this step before running the app. Without it, the app will fail with database migration errors like CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS "drizzle"."__drizzle_migrations" — permission denied.

After deploying, the app's service principal needs Postgres roles to access Lakebase tables. The DAB resource grants basic connectivity, but you must also grant Postgres-level schema and table permissions.

Step 1: Get the app's service principal client ID:

DATABRICKS_CONFIG_PROFILE=<profile> databricks apps get <app-name> --output json | jq -r '.service_principal_client_id'

Step 2: Grant permissions using the grant script:

# Provisioned:
DATABRICKS_CONFIG_PROFILE=<profile> uv run python scripts/grant_lakebase_permissions.py <sp-client-id> \
  --memory-type <type> --instance-name <name>

# Autoscaling (endpoint — reads LAKEBASE_AUTOSCALING_ENDPOINT from .env by default):
DATABRICKS_CONFIG_PROFILE=<profile> uv run python scripts/grant_lakebase_permissions.py <sp-client-id> \
  --memory-type <type> --autoscaling-endpoint <endpoint>

# Autoscaling (project + branch):
DATABRICKS_CONFIG_PROFILE=<profile> uv run python scripts/grant_lakebase_permissions.py <sp-client-id> \
  --memory-type <type> --project <project> --branch <branch>

Memory type by template:

Template	--memory-type value
agent-langgraph-advanced	langgraph
agent-openai-advanced	openai

The script handles fresh branches gracefully (warns but doesn't fail if tables don't exist yet — they'll be created on first app startup).

---

Step 7: Run Your App

DATABRICKS_CONFIG_PROFILE=<profile> databricks bundle run {{BUNDLE_NAME}}

Note: bundle deploy only uploads files and configures resources. bundle run is required to actually start the app with the new code.

---

Complete Examples: databricks.yml with Lakebase

Provisioned Lakebase

bundle:
  name: agent_langgraph

resources:
  apps:
    agent_langgraph:
      name: "my-agent-app"
      description: "Agent with long-term memory"
      source_code_path: ./
      config:
        command: ["uv", "run", "start-app"]
        env:
          - name: MLFLOW_TRACKING_URI
            value: "databricks"
          - name: MLFLOW_REGISTRY_URI
            value: "databricks-uc"
          - name: API_PROXY
            value: "http://localhost:8000/invocations"
          - name: CHAT_APP_PORT
            value: "3000"
          - name: CHAT_PROXY_TIMEOUT_SECONDS
            value: "300"
          - name: MLFLOW_EXPERIMENT_ID
            value_from: "experiment"
          # Lakebase instance name (resolved from database resource)
          - name: LAKEBASE_INSTANCE_NAME
            value_from: "database"
          # Static values for embedding configuration
          - name: EMBEDDING_ENDPOINT
            value: "databricks-gte-large-en"
          - name: EMBEDDING_DIMS
            value: "1024"

      resources:
        - name: 'experiment'
          experiment:
            experiment_id: ""
            permission: 'CAN_MANAGE'
        - name: 'database'
          database:
            instance_name: '<your-lakebase-instance-name>'
            database_name: 'databricks_postgres'
            permission: 'CAN_CONNECT_AND_CREATE'

targets:
  dev:
    mode: development
    default: true

Autoscaling Lakebase

bundle:
  name: agent_langgraph

resources:
  apps:
    agent_langgraph:
      name: "my-agent-app"
      description: "Agent with long-term memory"
      source_code_path: ./
      config:
        command: ["uv", "run", "start-app"]
        env:
          - name: MLFLOW_TRACKING_URI
            value: "databricks"
          - name: MLFLOW_REGISTRY_URI
            value: "databricks-uc"
          - name: API_PROXY
            value: "http://localhost:8000/invocations"
          - name: CHAT_APP_PORT
            value: "3000"
          - name: CHAT_PROXY_TIMEOUT_SECONDS
            value: "300"
          - name: MLFLOW_EXPERIMENT_ID
            value_from: "experiment"
          # Autoscaling Lakebase config
          - name: LAKEBASE_AUTOSCALING_PROJECT
            value: "<your-project-name>"
          - name: LAKEBASE_AUTOSCALING_BRANCH
            value: "<your-branch-name>"
          # Static values for embedding configuration
          - name: EMBEDDING_ENDPOINT
            value: "databricks-gte-large-en"
          - name: EMBEDDING_DIMS
            value: "1024"

      resources:
        - name: 'experiment'
          experiment:
            experiment_id: ""
            permission: 'CAN_MANAGE'
        - name: 'postgres'
          postgres:
            branch: "projects/<your-project-name>/branches/<your-branch-name>"
            database: "projects/<your-project-name>/branches/<your-branch-name>/databases/<your-database-id>"
            permission: 'CAN_CONNECT_AND_CREATE'

targets:
  dev:
    mode: development
    default: true