IRIntellrise
How-to

Chat with your Amazon Redshift data in plain English

Updated 2026-08-25

An AI data analyst is most useful when it runs on your real data. This guide shows how to connect Amazon Redshift so you can ask questions in plain English and get charts, dashboards and reports back — without writing SQL by hand.

The setup takes a few minutes: connect with a read-only user, let the analyst read the schema, and ask your first question. Your credentials are encrypted, and the analysis runs on your own AI provider key.

  1. 1

    Get your Amazon Redshift connection details

    You need the cluster endpoint, port (usually 5439), database name, username and password. Copy the endpoint from the Redshift console.

  2. 2

    Create a read-only user (recommended)

    Create a read-only user and GRANT SELECT on the schemas you want the analyst to see. Keep it separate from any ETL user. The copy-pasteable version is at intellrise.com/help/database-requirements, including the REVOKE most guides omit — Redshift's own documentation notes that every new user gets CREATE on the public schema by default, so a plain GRANT SELECT still leaves them able to create objects.

  3. 3

    Create your account and add your AI key

    Sign up, then add your own AI provider key (bring-your-own-key). If you don't have one yet, a free key takes about a minute to create — your key is encrypted and used only for your requests.

  4. 4

    Add the Amazon Redshift connection

    Add a data source, choose Redshift, and enter the endpoint, port, database, user and password. There is no SSL switch to keep enabled — Intellrise connects to Redshift without an explicit SSL parameter, so your cluster's own configuration decides. Click Connect: it saves the credentials encrypted and then immediately dials the cluster, so you get either “Connected — N tables found” or the exact error Redshift returned. A source that fails is still saved — correct it with the pencil icon and save again.

  5. 5

    Let the AI read and annotate your schema

    The analyst annotates your Redshift tables and columns. If you build models with dbt, point it at that schema so it understands your warehouse layout.

  6. 6

    Ask your first question in plain English

    Ask something like "Daily active users over the last 90 days". On a question the analyst judges complex — a join, a query spanning two sources, several steps — it shows a readable plan and waits for you to approve it before running anything; on one it judges simple it runs first and shows you afterwards. Either way you get the same two controls on every answer: Show SQL gives you the exact query that produced the number, and Show table gives you the rows it returned with their count. That is how you check a figure instead of trusting it. Refine by chatting, then pin it to a dashboard or save it as a report.

Why connect Amazon Redshift instead of exporting

A static export goes stale the moment you download it, and when an assistant only ever sees that exported file it has to guess what your columns mean. A connected AI data analyst reads live Amazon Redshift data, shows you a readable plan before running anything on the complex questions (simple ones it runs first and shows you after), and saves what your fields mean against the source itself — so the next question already knows them, and answers stay current and consistent.

Amazon Redshift: things to know

  • Make sure the cluster's security group allows inbound access from the app.
  • Redshift is a warehouse — ask for a date range on large fact tables to keep answers fast.

Example questions to ask your Amazon Redshift data

  • Daily active users over the last 90 days
  • Gross margin by product category this year
  • Funnel conversion by acquisition channel

Keeping it safe

  • Connect with a read-only user. That grant is what actually stops a write, and it is yours to set — and when you connect we check what that account is allowed to do, and show you the answer.
  • On our side every query is checked before it runs and refused if it contains a write statement — DROP, DELETE, UPDATE, INSERT and fourteen others, eighteen keywords in all. It is a keyword guard, not a full SQL parser, so it can only refuse what it can spell — which is why the read-only grant on your side is the control that actually holds. The two limit different things and neither replaces the other: your grant decides what we can be given, our guard decides what we can send.
  • Connection details and your AI key are encrypted at rest.
  • We train no model on your data — we do not have one; the analysis runs on your own provider key, so the terms that decide what happens to what you send are your provider's, not ours. We attach your Amazon Redshift read-only and query it in place rather than mirroring it, and the rows an answer returns stay in your own account until you delete them.

Frequently asked questions

There is no SSL setting in Intellrise to enable or disable. We connect to Redshift without an explicit SSL parameter, so whether the link is encrypted is decided by your cluster's own configuration. If an encrypted connection is a hard requirement for you, email contact@intellrise.com before you connect rather than assuming it either way.

Related

Get your end-to-end AI business intelligence now.

Ask in plain English, pin the answer to a dashboard, export it as CSV, Excel, PDF or PowerPoint — on the free tier that whole loop runs on one database source plus Google Sheets, and the field definitions you save carry into every later session, including after a schema refresh. One exception you should hear from us rather than discover: on a Google Sheet, re-running the tab picker — even only to add a tab — clears the definitions saved for that source and reads its schema fresh. Connecting a database is the technical part: a read-only user and network access, once. If your numbers live in a spreadsheet, none of that applies: put the file in a Google Sheet and it connects on the free tier, with no read-only user and no open port. Uploading a CSV or Excel file directly is a Pro feature, and every new account gets 14 days of Pro with no card. The one thing no plan waives is your own AI provider key, and a Google Gemini key is free to create.

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