MetadataOps Kit

The operating manual for metadata

Every other part of your stack picked up an owner and an ops process over the last 15 years. Metadata mostly lived in a wiki, which is why an agent can sound more certain than your estate can back up.
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This is where the practice gets written down, from the first hire to the first audit. Read it in order or pick your role below and start with the problem already in your queue.

Reference

The five dimensions and the four bands

Dimensions we score

Dimension
The question
Coverage
What share of the estate has harvested metadata at all?
Resolution
Column level or table level?
Derivation
Parsed from code, or inferred from run logs?
Freshness
Does the record match the live estate today?
Governance state
Owned, versioned, policy-bound, tied to a physical asset?
These describe the metadata. Values, data recency, and pipeline reliability belong to data quality tooling.

Score bands

Band
The answer
Described · 0 to 6
Metadata is documentation. Agents answer confidently with no way to check them.
Partial · 7 to 12
The modern slice holds. The edges are dark and the failures are hard to predict.
Traceable · 13 to 16
Provenance across most of the estate, with named exceptions.
Operated · 17 to 20
Agents ground on governed definitions. Auditors get a query result.
Score your estate to find your band.