Entity Manager

Entity Manager is the Curator Space workspace for viewing and managing the whole semantic layer, along with its connected schema entities. It's where curators browse every table, column, metric, business term, and relationship Consensus has modeled, inspect how they connect, and govern how they change - with a full version history behind every edit.

What it is

Consensus builds and maintains the semantic graph autonomously, but every enterprise still needs a place for a human to look at the whole graph, correct a definition, and see exactly who changed what and why. Entity Manager is that place. From one workspace, curators can:

• browse all supported entity groups from one place
• filter by datasource, schema, table, column, deleted status, and modified window
• inspect details in a right-side panel
• create, edit, or delete supported entity types
• navigate cross-entity references
• inspect historical versions and lineage traces

Entity families

Entity Manager covers every node type in the semantic graph, grouped into two families.

Schema and data entities anchor the graph to your actual warehouse structure. Semantic layer entities are the curator-governed meaning layer described in Consensus - the same primitives your AI agents and analysts reason over before any query is generated.

Capability matrix

Current UI/API behavior, by entity type:

^† System-defined TABLE_JOIN and CATEGORY_SET entries are protected from edit - only user-defined entries are curator-editable. Delete is available only for supported types and always requires explicit confirmation.

Version history & lineage traces

The detail drawer for any entity has an Overview and a Version History mode. Version History is Entity Manager's governance backbone - it's what turns a semantic graph edit from an invisible mutation into an accountable, replayable change:

• see each entity version (vN) with a timestamp and actor metadata
• view change reason labels - for example, manual edit, AI rewrite, or migration
• expand a historical version to inspect that exact snapshot
• follow connected changes through version change connectors and related entities

This is the same versioned, attributed, timestamped audit trail described in Consensus governance & explainability - Entity Manager is where you read it and act on it.

Governance & change controls

Entity-level controls enforce safe operations rather than relying on convention:

• TABLE and COLUMN are browsable and editable for metadata context, but not creatable from Entity Manager - they stay aligned with the source schema.
• System-defined TABLE_JOIN entries are protected from edit.
• System-defined CATEGORY_SET entries are protected from edit.
• Delete is available only for supported types and always follows explicit confirmation.

What curators can change

Primary curator-managed entities:

• METRIC, BUSINESS_TERM, BUSINESS_ENTITY, EVENT, ACTION, CONCEPT, CATEGORY, RELATIONSHIP
• user-defined TABLE_JOIN
• user-defined CATEGORY_SET

Recommended governance workflow

1. Scope the entity type

   Choose an entity type and narrow scope with datasource and hierarchy filters.

2. Inspect current state

   Review the current definition and linked references in Overview.

3. Apply intentional changes

   Create or edit with a clear, deliberate change - not a bulk sweep.

4. Validate downstream impact

   Navigate references to see what dashboards, agents, or metrics depend on the entity before confirming.

5. Confirm the trace

   Check the new snapshot and change-reason label in Version History.

6. Reuse the snapshot

   Use lineage snapshots during review, regression checks, and incident analysis.

Ownership guidance by entity class

• TABLE and COLUMN - source-aligned structural metadata. Treat them as contextual anchors for semantic curation, not editable business definitions.
• TABLE_JOIN and CATEGORY_SET - user-authored records are curator-governed; system-authored records should be changed through upstream pipelines and processes, not edited by hand.
• Semantic entities (METRIC, BUSINESS_TERM, BUSINESS_ENTITY, EVENT, ACTION, CONCEPT, CATEGORY, RELATIONSHIP) - the curator-governed semantic intent layer. Keep labels, descriptions, synonyms, and references coherent so downstream discovery and agent reasoning quality remain stable.

Where it fits

Entity Manager governs the same graph every other Colrows surface compiles against - it doesn't sit off to the side:

• Consensus autonomously proposes and maintains the graph; Entity Manager is where a human reviews, corrects, and approves it.
• Data access control policies apply to the same entities curators manage here - editing a BUSINESS_TERM doesn't bypass RBAC/ABAC on the underlying tables and columns.
• The search_metadata and ask_metadata MCP tools let AI agents query the exact entities and definitions curated in Entity Manager - what a curator names and defines here is what an agent sees.
• Colrows AI grounds every answer in these same governed definitions, so a correction made in Entity Manager is immediately reflected in every future answer.