Kater uses a small set of words. Learn them once, and every page of these docs and every screen of the portal reads the same way.

Your organisation

Term	What it is
Organisation	Your company in Kater. People sign in to it through PropelAuth, and everything belongs to one organisation.
Connection	One warehouse, Snowflake or DuckDB, and everything modeled on it. Its folder is connections/<name>/.
Content store	The git repository where Kater keeps your organisation’s content. Nobody clones it directly.
Local copy	A snapshot of everything you can read, made with kater git clone. You publish from it with kater git push.
Write-back	An optional, one-way publish of each connection’s modeling/ folder to your own GitHub repository.
Roles	Admin, Developer and Viewer. Each role carries permissions, such as running SQL or managing users.
Access levels	Viewer, Editor and Manager, granted on folders and files to people, groups or Everyone.

Layers

Each layer reads only from the layers above it.

Layer	What lives there	Who writes it
Source	Database datasets, in modeling/db_objects/	Schema sync
Shared	Kater datasets, semantic models and shared tests, in modeling/kater_objects/	The data team
Workspace	Workspace roots, queries and charts	Anyone, in workspaces they can edit
Sandbox	Scratch files in your brainstorm folder, which nothing reads	You

Modeling

Term	What it is
Kater SQL	Your warehouse’s SQL with Kater’s additions: DIMENSION, MEASURE, CUSTOM_CALCULATION, EVAL, filters, RELATIONSHIP, the KATER__ functions and -- @ comments. Every model is a .sql file with a short YAML header.
Database dataset	One warehouse table, as a generated CREATE TABLE.
Kater dataset	The governed view of one table: named dimensions, measures and formats.
Custom SQL dataset	A Kater dataset written as one read-only SQL query over warehouse tables.
Semantic model	Kater datasets joined with relationships into the model people ask questions of.
Dimension	A field you group, filter or slice by, such as Platform or Order Month.
Measure	A reusable total, such as Spend, added up again at whatever level a reader asks for.
Custom calculation	A field a query computes across rows, such as a running total or a rank.
Parameter and filter	A value a reader sets, such as a date window, and the condition that uses it.

Analysis

Term	What it is
Workspace	A project over one shared model, with its queries, charts, dashboard, tests and apps. It is personal, or a connection workspace that others can share.
Query	A saved Kater SQL question in a workspace. Its files sit in the query_contracts/ folder.
Chart	One way to draw a query, saved in the workspace’s charts/ folder.
Dashboard	A workspace’s saved charts in sections, under one filter bar.
App	An HTML page, report, deck or chat thread that draws live queries through Kater’s tags.
Explore	Ready-made cards for each shared model, which you add to a workspace.
Sandbox	Where you write SQL in scratch files and run it, before you select a workspace.
Brainstorm folder	Your private folder for notes, scratch files, workspace copies and draft apps.
Workspace copy	A private copy of a workspace where you try a change, then compare and apply it.

Agents

Term	What it is
Kater MCP	Your organisation’s MCP server. Agents connect to it and act as the person who signed in.
Ask panel	Writes a prompt from what you type and the page you are on, then opens it in your agent. Kater runs no chat of its own.
Starter	A ready-made prompt, such as Brief me, in the Ask panel and in your agent.
Scheduled workflow	A workflow with a schedule: block, which your own agent runs on its own, such as every Monday at 08:00.
Skill, workflow and agent	Markdown files in ai_tools/ that teach your assistant a task, a multi-step process or a role.
About you	Your about.md: your role, metrics, answer style and team. The company has one too.
Connection context	connection_context.md, where the data team tells agents what a connection holds.
Rules	rules.md, your organisation’s own rules. Every agent reads it at the start of a conversation, after Kater’s rules.

Trust

Term	What it is
Verified field	A field a shared model defines. The server decides this, and a field computed in a workspace is not verified.
Curated	A model, query or workspace the data team recommends, with curated: ["true"] in its frontmatter tags. It grants no access and verifies no field.
Promotion	Moving a field from a query to its workspace root, or from a workspace into a shared model.
Promotion request	A person’s request, with a reason, to move a field into a shared model. The data team approves or denies it.
Promotion recommendation	A field Kater finds defined the same way in several models, offered to the data team.
Test	A question with the rows you checked, run again after changes and after each sync.
History and Undo	Every change to a workspace, app or file, each of which you can undo as a new change.