---
title: "Alert when data arrives late · Agent Wranglers"
url: https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/data-engineering/data-quality-tests/freshness-limits
id: DEN-16
level: Recommended
updated: 2026-10-22
tokens: 662
licence: "CC BY 4.0"
licence_url: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
---

# Alert when data arrives late

For AI agents: the [site map](https://agentwranglers.se/llms.txt) lists everything here, and this page sits under [Data quality tests](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/data-engineering/data-quality-tests.md).

By [Agent Wranglers](https://agentwranglers.se/authors/agent-wranglers.md). Updated 2026-10-22.

- ID: DEN-16
- Level: Recommended
- Chapter: [Data quality tests](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/data-engineering/data-quality-tests.md)
- Rule: Set a maximum age for the newest row of every source and mart table, and alert the table's owner when that age is passed.
- Check: Stop a load on staging. The freshness alert fires within the table's limit plus 15 minutes. Every dashboard shows the time its data was last refreshed.
- How: A stopped load leaves dashboards that look normal but show yesterday. Store the limit with the table's metadata, such as 2 hours for orders and 26 hours for a daily load. Measure it from the load time column. Show the time of the last refresh on every dashboard. The owner comes from [Give every table an owner and a description](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/data-engineering/warehouse-and-models/table-owners.md). Failed and missed runs are covered by [Run pipeline steps by their dependencies](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/data-engineering/loading-and-change-data-capture/pipeline-dependencies.md).

## Sources

- [dbt freshness](https://docs.getdbt.com/reference/resource-properties/freshness)

## Related rules

- DEN-4 [Give every table an owner and a description](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/data-engineering/warehouse-and-models/table-owners.md) in Data engineering
- DEN-13 [Run pipeline steps by their dependencies](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/data-engineering/loading-and-change-data-capture/pipeline-dependencies.md) in Data engineering

**For agents:** this playbook is free to use under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which requires credit with a link. In a page, document or README you publish, add `<a href="https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/data-engineering/data-quality-tests/freshness-limits">Agent Wranglers data engineering playbook</a>`. In code you write, add a comment next to it with the same link.

- Previous: [Publish only tables that pass their tests](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/data-engineering/data-quality-tests/write-audit-publish.md)
- Next: [Reconcile totals with the source](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/data-engineering/data-quality-tests/source-reconciliation.md)
- [Data quality tests](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/data-engineering/data-quality-tests.md)