In Airbyte, there is no specific configuration just to replicate the schema (structure) of tables without data, but you can use an approach to ensure that empty tables are still replicated with their structures.

Yes, you're correct. Airbyte doesn't duplicate the artifacts (tables, views, functions) of your database and recreate them in your destination. Instead, Airbyte ingests data from the source (tables, views, materialized views, source APIs), converts the data to the AirbyteMessage format, and emits them to your destination. This allows Airbyte to connect any source to any destination, but it does not recreate the source database in your destination ([source](https://discuss.airbyte.io/t/459)). However, if you want to replicate the structure of tables without data, you can use the Overwrite Sync mode in Airbyte. This mode will create empty tables in the destination if there is no new data to add. This was mentioned in a Github issue where a user reported that Overwrite Sync was creating empty tables when syncing from Postgres to Snowflake ([source](https://github.com/airbytehq/airbyte/issues/39039)). Please note that this is not a direct way to replicate only the schema, but it can serve as a workaround if you want to replicate the structure of tables without data.