In dbt Cloud, the default database and schema values are typically configured in the dbt_project.yml file and the profiles.yml file (or through the dbt Cloud UI if you're using managed connections)

1. dbt_project.yml – Defines the schema naming convention

**In your dbt_project.yml, you can set the default schema using the schema configuration:

name: my_project
version: '1.0'
config-version: 2

profile: my_profile

# Optional: override default schema
models:
  my_project:
    +schema: analytics

This sets the default schema for models in the project.

2. profiles.yml – Defines the database connection

**This file is used locally or configured via the dbt Cloud UI. It defines the target database and credentials:

my_profile:

my_profile:
  target: dev
  outputs:
    dev:
      type: snowflake
      account: your_account
      user: your_user
      password: your_password
      role: your_role
      database: your_database
      warehouse: your_warehouse
      schema: your_schema

FYI In dbt Cloud, this is usually configured through the "Environment" settings under "Deploy" > "Environments", where you define:

Target database
Default schema
Warehouse (for Snowflake)

regards, your question - why does dbt want to prefix the default schema value to what I originally specified in my config statement?

dbt's behavior of prefixing the default schema value (from your target profile) to what you specify in your model config is part of its schema naming convention strategy, and it’s designed to support multi-environment development and namespacing.