Can I use the meltano environment variables from

.env

in dbt

profiles.yml

, it doesn't seem to work.

Yes - I do it with my snowflake password here https://github.com/meltano/squared/blob/24c819ad83da6c3b83fd1497226ce0cf729e36e0/data/transform/profiles/snowflake/profiles.yml#L16. Theres a print-var flag you can use to test your variables are exposed as expected https://docs.meltano.com/reference/command-line-interface#debugging-plugin-environment

got it, thanks. I was using the maeltano format

${var_name}

instead of

"{{ env_var('var_name') }}"