A loader such as Fivetran or Airbyte copies records into a warehouse.
dbt starts after those records arrive. It transforms warehouse data; it doesn't become an ingestion connector because a source is declared in YAML. At Harbor Cart, the raw order table is the handoff between the loader operator and the analytics team.
Source freshness compares a loaded-at timestamp with a configured threshold. Choose a field that represents arrival or update timing for the question you need to monitor.
An event's business timestamp can be old even when its record arrived on time. A freshness pass also says nothing about duplicates or missing identifiers. Pair the freshness signal with data tests, and keep ingestion incidents separate from SQL defects when you decide who needs to respond.