Many physical systems admit a simplified description of their dynamics when examined at macroscopic scales. This simplified description—generally referred to as hydrodynamics—is governed by a restricted set of macroscopic observables that includes conserved quantities, Goldstone modes, and order parameters. An outstanding challenge in quantum many-body physics is finding this hydrodynamic description in terms of the microscopic variables. I will present a method inspired by holography for constructing the effective hydrodynamic description in the form of a transfer matrix and a set of hydrodynamically-relevant variables. The method proceeds by constructing an alternative representation of the operator dynamics in the form of a local (1+1)d “bulk” theory. I will show how the properties of the auxiliary bulk encode the existence of an effective local equation of motion of a given model, allowing for the extraction of hydrodynamic parameters like diffusion constants and characteristic thermalization scales. I will show results for various qubit and fermionic systems, and compare to the known literature.