Collections
Group related tables, models, and contracts, and give them the context that explains what they mean.
A collection is a named grouping of related tables, models, and contracts, along with the descriptive context that explains them. Collections keep a workspace organized and make analytical objects understandable, both to other builders and to Gaur's natural-language interfaces.
What a collection holds
A collection brings together the objects that belong to one area of your data. The Jaffle Shop sample is a single collection that holds all six raw tables, all five models, and all five contracts for the cafe-chain analytics surface.
| In a collection | |
|---|---|
| Tables | The raw connected datasets for this area. |
| Models | The reusable SQL-defined objects built on them. |
| Contracts | The governed interfaces published for this area. |
| Context | Prose that describes what the data means. |
A collection has a name, a slug (its stable identifier), and an optional description.
Why collections matter
Organization
A workspace fills up with tables, models, and contracts over time. Collections give that sprawl a structure, so builders can find the objects that belong together instead of scanning one flat list.
Context for natural language
Gaur's chat and MCP interfaces answer questions in natural language. To do that well, they need to know what the data means, not just its column names. The context attached to a collection, and to the contracts and tables inside it, is what they read.
See the dedicated Context page for what good context looks like and how to write it. Treat it as part of building, not an afterthought.
Working with collections
Create a collection
Give it a name and description for the area of data it covers.
Add objects
Add the tables, models, and contracts that belong to this area. An object can be created inside a collection or added to one later.
Write context
Describe what the data means. This context is what powers accurate natural-language answers over the collection's contracts.
Collections and consumers
When you publish a consumer, you scope it to the contracts it may expose. Organizing those contracts into collections first makes that scoping clear: a consumer typically exposes the contracts of one collection, or a deliberate subset.