trailsbi 1.2.0

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_{* Power BI is a trademark of Microsoft. TrailsBI is not affiliated with or endorsed by Microsoft.}

Trails for Power BI

TrailsBI reads a Power BI project saved as PBIP (TMDL and PBIR files) and builds one self-contained HTML page you can open in any browser. It runs entirely on your machine: no sign-in, no upload, no telemetry.

Everything about your Reports and Semantic Models

Lineage - Follow any field from source to visual

• Pick a column or measure and see every data source, table and measure it depends on, in navy.
• Everything built on it, down to the visuals and pages, lights up in teal.
• Compact cards for the whole picture, detailed cards with usage counts when you need them.

Model - Every table, column, measure and relationship	Reports - What each page and visual actually uses
Health - Best Practice Analyzer, without the setup	AI Readiness - How well Copilot will understand the model

Get started

1. In Power BI Desktop, save your report as a Power BI project: File > Save as > Power BI project (.pbip).

2. Install TrailsBI (Python 3.9 or later, no other dependencies):

   pip install trailsbi
   

   Or

   uv tool install trailsbi
   

3. Run it on your project:

   trailsbi "D:\Reports\Sales\Sales.pbip"
   

   This writes TrailsBI Report - Sales - 2026-10-04 16-47.html (with the current date and time) to the current folder. Open it in any browser.

Options:

trailsbi [PROJECT] [-o OUTPUT] [--open] [--embed]

  PROJECT       a .pbip file, the folder that holds it, or a .Report folder
                (default: the current folder, so `trailsbi` alone works inside a project)
  -o, --output  where to write the page: a file name, or a folder for the default name
                (default: "TrailsBI Report - <project> - <date time>.html" here)
  --open        open the page in your browser when it is ready
  --embed       show the report inside Power BI: adds a hidden TrailsBI table to the
                model and a TrailsBI page with the visual to the report (see below).
                Writes the HTML page only with -o or --open

TrailsBI builds one project per run. To cover several reports, run it once for each.

See it inside Power BI

The TrailsBI visual (preview) shows the same five views inside a Power BI report. It reads them from a hidden TrailsBI table that --embed writes into the semantic model.

1. Close the project in Power BI Desktop, then run: trailsbi "D:\Reports\Sales" --embed
2. Open the project and refresh (Home > Refresh) so the new table loads.

It also adds a TrailsBI page to the report, hidden in view mode, with the visual on it and its fields already set. The visual is saved inside the report, so there is nothing to import.

The page needs a report saved in the PBIR format (Power BI Desktop's default for projects since 2025). For an older report, --embed writes the table and says so; add the visual yourself: download TrailsBI.pbiviz from the visual's latest release, import it (Visualizations pane: ... > Import a visual from a file) and add it to a page. In the Data pane, right-click and turn on View hidden, then drag TrailsBI > Part and TrailsBI > Chunk onto the visual.

Run --embed again whenever the model or report changes, then refresh. It replaces the table (even if you renamed it) and never adds a second one. It keeps the TrailsBI page as you left it and brings the visual in the report up to date. TrailsBI leaves its own table, page and visual out of the analysis.

The table holds the model's names, DAX and data source addresses, so anyone who can open the report can read them in the visual. Embed it only where that is allowed.

Single file

Each release also has trailsbi.pyz, the whole tool in one file: python trailsbi.pyz "D:\Reports\Sales".

Common Installation Issues

1. Windows: "'trailsbi' is not recognized"

When Python comes from the Microsoft Store or the Python install manager, pip puts the trailsbi command in a Scripts folder that is not on your PATH. pip warns about it during the install, and running trailsbi "pbip-project-path" returns 'trailsbi' is not recognized.

Fix:

• Add that Scripts folder to your own PATH once. Setup

Privacy and security

• Reads metadata files only. Never opens cache.abf or any imported data.
• Makes no network calls and sends no telemetry.
• Read-only: never writes to your project files, except the TrailsBI table when you ask for it with --embed.
• The page is one HTML file with no external scripts, fonts or images.

See SECURITY.md for details.

Develop

git clone https://github.com/trailsbi/trailsbi
cd trailsbi
python -m pip install -e . pytest "ruff==0.16.10"
python -m pytest
ruff check . && ruff format --check .

CONTRIBUTING.md explains how the code is laid out.

Licence

Apache License 2.0. See LICENSE and NOTICE.

Trademarks

Power BI is a trademark of Microsoft. TrailsBI is not affiliated with or endorsed by Microsoft.