Walkthrough: the lineage-explainer skill, from question to impact set

At a glance

Learning objectives

• Install and invoke the lineage-explainer skill
• Distinguish technical lineage from business lineage in its output
• Produce an impact report with owner, criticality and earliest SLA

What you need

• [object Object]
• A lineage store the skill can read (DataHub or any OpenLineage-compatible backend)

Steps

1. Install it — npx de-agent-platform add lineage-explainer. (from skill-lineage-explainer )
2. Start from the question — "what breaks if I change this column?", answered with evidence. (from skill-lineage-explainer )
3. Know what it does — traces column-level lineage from an asset to its upstream sources and downstream consumers, and reports the impact set for a proposed change. (from skill-lineage-explainer )
4. Read the two graphs — technical lineage (tables and jobs) versus business lineage (metrics and reports); a CFO does not read table names. (from skill-lineage-explainer )
5. Walk the impact set — downstream from the changed node, stopping at published marts; report owner, criticality, and the earliest SLA that will break. (from skill-lineage-explainer )
6. Open the files — SKILL.md for the method, examples/impact.md for a worked report, references/lineage-stores.md for supported stores. (from skill-lineage-explainer )
7. Reach the same answers from commands — /impact for blast radius, /lineage-up and /lineage-down for the graph in either direction. (from plugin-lineage-graph )

Check yourself

• The skill's report has three numbers — owner, criticality, earliest SLA — not a wall of edges.
• You can state which marts stop the walk and why — they are where business impact lives.

Worked example

1. Technical lineage — which tables/jobs depend on this column.
2. Business lineage — which metrics/reports depend on it.
3. Impact set — walk downstream from the changed node, stopping at
   published marts. Report owner, criticality, earliest SLA that breaks.

SKILL.md                      — the two questions, two graphs
examples/impact.md            — a worked impact report
references/lineage-stores.md  — stores the skill can read

Sourced from

• Lineage Explainer
• Lineage Graph

Security scan

Last sweep 2026-10-24: 0 finding(s), 0 marked as examples.

Common gotchas

• Answering only the technical graph under-serves the business — the metric owner cares about the report, not the table.
• The walk stops at published marts on purpose — edges beyond them do not change the decision.
• A lineage store the skill cannot read is a guessing game — check the supported stores reference first.

Production considerations

• Run the skill in the PR template for column changes — evidence beats memory in review.
• Keep examples/impact.md as the format contract for incident reports too.

Diagram

lineage-explainer walkthrough
   |
   |- question: what breaks if I change this column?
   |
   |- technical graph: tables/jobs ──▶ who depends on it
   |- business graph:  metrics/reports ──▶ who feels it
   |
   |- walk downstream ──▶ stop at published marts
   |
    --> impact set: owner + criticality + earliest SLA that breaks

Registry stats