agnes-the-ai-analyst/cli/skills/agnes-table-registration.md

name	description
agnes-table-registration	Use when adding tables to the Agnes catalog so analysts can query them — single registration, bulk discovery, updates, and removals. Admin role required.

Registering tables in Agnes

agnes catalog lists tables from system.duckdb::table_registry. A table you can agnes snapshot create exists in that registry. This skill is the protocol for getting tables into and out of it.

Auth: every command here requires admin role. The CLI sends the active PAT (agnes auth import-token); REST examples use Authorization: Bearer $PAT against the configured server.

Decision flow — single vs. bulk vs. update

user wants to add tables
├── one specific table they named  → register-table (single)
├── "everything from <source>"     → discover-and-register
├── existing entry, change a field → PUT /api/admin/registry/{id}
└── remove a table from catalog    → DELETE /api/admin/registry/{id}

Before you register — verify the source exists

Registering a table that does NOT exist at the source is silent: the row lands in the registry, but every later agnes snapshot create / agnes query against it 404s or 500s with an opaque message. Always verify first.

For BigQuery (source-type=bigquery):

# 1. confirm the dataset and table exist (uses the analyst's BQ creds, not the server's)
bq show --project_id=<billing-project> <data-project>:<dataset>.<table>

For Keboola (source-type=keboola):

# the discover-and-register dry-run is the lowest-friction probe
agnes admin discover-and-register --source-type=keboola --dry-run

If the source can't confirm the table exists, stop and ask the user to verify rather than registering speculatively.

Single-table registration

agnes admin register-table <name> \
    --source-type=<keboola|bigquery|jira> \
    --bucket=<dataset_or_bucket> \
    --source-table=<source_object_name> \
    --query-mode=<local|remote> \
    --description="<short purpose, 1 line>"

Field meanings:

Flag	Meaning	Example
<name>	Display name; the slugged form (lower, spaces→_) becomes the table id	User Sessions → id user_sessions
--source-type	Connector identity	bigquery, keboola, jira
--bucket	BQ dataset / Keboola bucket / Jira board	product_analytics
--source-table	Object name at the source (case-sensitive for BQ)	s1_session_landings
--query-mode	local = synced parquet / remote = on-demand BQ	remote for BQ views
--description	One sentence shown in agnes catalog	"Per-session landing-page rows."

Idempotence: the API returns 409 Conflict if the slugged id already exists. Always run agnes admin list-tables --json first and only register when the id is missing.

Bulk discovery

When the user says "register everything from ", let the connector enumerate:

# 1. preview without writing anything
agnes admin discover-and-register --source-type=bigquery --dry-run --json

# 2. review output, then commit
agnes admin discover-and-register --source-type=bigquery

discover-and-register is safe on re-run: existing tables are skipped (not overwritten), new ones added. The --dry-run output lists what would change.

For Keboola, pass --token and --url if not already in instance.yaml:

agnes admin discover-and-register --source-type=keboola \
    --token="$KEBOOLA_TOKEN" --url=https://connection.keboola.com --dry-run

Update an existing entry

No CLI command for this — use REST directly:

# change description, source-table, or query-mode on a registered entry
curl -sS -X PUT \
    -H "Authorization: Bearer $PAT" \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    -d '{"description": "Updated copy", "query_mode": "remote"}' \
    "$AGNES_SERVER_URL/api/admin/registry/<table_id>"

Only fields you include in the JSON body are updated — unspecified fields keep prior values.

Remove a table

curl -sS -X DELETE \
    -H "Authorization: Bearer $PAT" \
    "$AGNES_SERVER_URL/api/admin/registry/<table_id>"

Returns 204 No Content on success, 404 if the id doesn't exist. The underlying source data is NOT touched — only the catalog entry. Local snapshots created via agnes snapshot create also remain on the analyst's laptop until they agnes snapshot drop them.

Heuristics

• Slug, not display name. When a later command asks for table_id, use the lower-snake_case form, not the original --name. agnes admin list-tables shows both columns.
• One descriptive line. --description shows up in agnes catalog --json and in agent rails reasoning. Make it count: "What's in this table?" not "Imported 2026-01-15."
• local vs remote is permanent until you re-register. Switching modes mid-life requires PUT-ing query_mode; that doesn't move data, just changes how it's served.
• Don't register joins or views you'd rather compute on-the-fly. A registered table is a long-term contract — analysts will write to its name. For one-off computations prefer agnes query --remote.

When NOT to register

• The user wants to inspect a table once, doesn't intend to share it: register the row once with query_mode='remote' (admin-only, ~30s) and query it via agnes query --remote "SELECT … FROM <registered_id>". Direct bq."<dataset>"."<table>" syntax is now registry-gated — unregistered paths return 403 bq_path_not_registered (closes the pre-existing RBAC + cost-cap bypass).
• The data lives in a third source not yet supported by a connector: implement the connector first (see connectors.md skill), then register.
• The dataset already has a registered "parent" view that exposes the rows you want: register-table is for distinct catalog entities, not for slicing existing ones — slice with agnes snapshot create --where.

Confirmation flow

After registration, sanity-check:

agnes admin list-tables --json | jq '.[] | select(.id == "<table_id>")'
agnes catalog --json    | jq '.tables[] | select(.id == "<table_id>")'
agnes schema <table_id>     # forces a real source-side schema fetch — fails fast if source is wrong

If agnes schema 500s on a freshly registered remote BQ table, the most common causes (in order): wrong --source-table (typo), wrong --bucket (dataset), missing data_source.bigquery.billing_project when reading cross-project, missing serviceusage.services.use IAM on the billing project.