Cookbook
undatum covers many workflows. This page is a task-oriented index: find the row that sounds like you, then follow the linked reference sections. If you are completely new, do the five-minute quickstart first.
| You are a… | You want to… | Start with |
|---|---|---|
| Data analyst | Inspect unfamiliar files and answer questions without writing a program | table, tui, web, profile, frequency, sql, plot |
| Data engineer | Build repeatable, streaming transformations across formats, databases, and object storage | convert, dedup, db dump / db load, pipeline |
| Data steward | Assess quality, encode reusable rules, and produce evidence before data is released | analyze, validate, diff, schema |
| Open-data publisher | Publish documented, portable, standards-friendly datasets | package, doc, mask, validate |
| Application developer | Embed data preparation in Python or expose a dataset through a read-only API | Python Dataset SDK, api |
| Researcher / journalist | Turn awkward public files and documents into analysis-ready, shareable data | extract, sniff, convert, doc |
| Operations / security analyst | Search large event exports, reduce sensitive data, and create focused incident extracts | search, select, sample, mask |
| AI / automation builder | Give agents controlled dataset tools or add AI assistance to documentation | mcp, ai doc, LangChain tools |
| Plugin author | Add domain-specific commands, connectors, or transforms without a fork | plugins, entry points |
All commands below are also available via the shorter data alias
(data convert … is identical to undatum convert …).