Data Contracts

Formalize producer-consumer agreements with data contracts. Drafts YAML contracts with schema, grain, SLA, PII classification, and ownership so data-quality issues are caught at the boundary, not downstream.

This skill makes Claude a data-contract specialist. It writes source-to-consumer contracts in structured YAML capturing schema and grain, freshness and volume SLAs, PII and sensitivity classification, ownership, and semantic definitions. Covers versioning and change management, enforcement hooks in CI and orchestration, and mapping contracts to dbt, Great Expectations, and warehouse checks so breaking changes are blocked before they ship.

When to use

Use when defining a data contract between a producer and consumer, documenting schema, SLA, and PII, or enforcing data quality at the pipeline boundary.

Examples

Draft a contract

Producer to consumer

Write a data contract in YAML for a users table with schema, grain, freshness SLA, and PII flags

Classify PII

Governance

Add sensitivity and PII classification plus ownership to my orders data contract

Enforce in CI

Block breaks

Wire my data contract into CI so a schema change that violates it fails the build