# What it can do Nearly everything here has a keyboard path and a menu; some of it has neither a button nor a banner, which is what this page is for. The [keyboard reference](/docs/keyboard/) is the short version. ## Gripes DataGripe reads your SQL back to you and says what is wrong with it. None of the rules are about formatting — a rule earns its place by knowing something the query text does not say, or by being about damage rather than tidiness. [The rules page](/rules/) is the whole catalogue, rendered from the code, so it is never a count somebody forgot to update. - **Statements**: a join with no condition, `NOT IN` against a subquery that can yield `NULL`, a write with no `WHERE`, an inequality against a nullable column. - **Schema**: a table with no primary key, a view built on `SELECT *`, a duplicate index, a non-concurrent index build, a `SECURITY DEFINER` routine with no `search_path`, and a routine declared volatile that only reads. - **Grants**: a routine PUBLIC can execute, an untrusted role that can write, row security switched on with no policy behind it, a view that reads its base tables as its owner. These stay silent until a role is marked untrusted — guessing which role is the anonymous one would be worse than saying nothing. **The volume is yours.** The same finding is re-worded at four levels — notice, warning, fatal and panic — and the wording is chosen when it is shown, so turning the dial never re-runs the analysis. `panic` is a joke and is opt-in; `fatal` swears. **Anything you disagree with is dismissable** for that one occurrence, that table, or the whole project — and the app always tells you it is hiding something rather than quietly showing you less. ## Projects A project holds datasources, shared files, domains, members and roles. The switcher is the prompt in the header — `>Datagripe:_` — and *New project…* is the last item in it. - **Rename** it in project settings, if your role can manage the project. - **Delete** it from the danger zone of the same panel: reveal, type the project's name, execute. It takes everything DataGripe holds about the project — its datasources and their stored credentials, its shared files, its domains and tags, its dismissed gripes, its members, its roles and its MCP tokens — in one cascade, and it cannot be undone. - **Nothing on the host's disk is touched.** A repository datasource is a clone somebody else also has, an exported domain is a directory under version control, and a datasource path points at work that was never DataGripe's. Deleting the project is DataGripe forgetting them. - **Nobody is left without a project.** Deleting your only one is refused, and so is deleting a shared project somebody else has no alternative to — remove them from it first. An account with no project cannot open the application. ## The interface - **One Files section** in the sidebar: the datasource's own directories, the project's shared files and this browser's scratchpads, as three kinds of root in one tree. Each has its own `new`, and every section — Files, Repository, Online, MCP Server — starts collapsed and stays where it is in the list whether it is open or shut. - **A section header carries the facts you would otherwise open it for**: the branch, the number of changed files and a refresh on Repository; how many people are here on Online; whether an agent can connect, and with what, on MCP Server. - **`refresh` on a repository fetches first**, so *0 behind* is about the remote as it is now rather than the last time somebody pulled. The counts sit on the buttons that change them — `push 2`, `pull 0`. - **One avatar in the header** opens the account menu: the project you are in and your role, the two settings panels, and the way out. Set a name in Account settings and the button wears it. - **The version is bottom left**, as one number — and as *Update Available* when a newer release exists, when the page has fallen behind the server, or when a downloaded build is waiting. Clicking it tells you the one thing that applies an update *here*, which is different in every shape, and in Kubernetes offers the button that does it. - **Scale.** Account settings has a slider for how big the interface is, from 80% to 180%. Every size in the application is a multiple of it, so the tree, the tabs, the editor and the results move together. It is stored in the browser rather than the account — the reason to turn it up is usually the screen in front of you. ## Editor and documents - Movable tabs, horizontal and vertical splits, and one editor model per document so a split never desynchronises from itself. - Drafts and layout survive a reload, stored in the browser. - **Markdown documents** render beside SQL — a runbook lives in the project with the queries it describes, and a SQL fence inside it runs and formats like SQL. - **You name the file**, in the row it will occupy, prefilled with `query-N.sql` and with the extension left out of the selection so typing keeps it. The extension is the whole rule: `.md` is a runbook, `.sql` is a query, anything else opens as plain text rather than being refused. Renaming `notes.sql` to `notes.md` switches it there and then — no reload. - **A name that is taken counts up** — `notes.md`, `notes-1.md` — rather than being refused. Rename it afterwards if that is not what you meant. - **Revert to last save** is in the right-click menu of any file with unsaved changes: the counterpart to the dot that says it has them. - **Reformatting** on `Ctrl+Alt+L` for SQL, JSON and Markdown. ## Running queries - Run the selection, the statement at the cursor, or the whole document. You do not have to select a statement to run it. - Results stream in batches, and cancellation goes down a control path that is not the one being blocked — so cancel works on a query that is stuck, which is the only time it matters. - Row, byte, timeout and concurrency limits are enforced by the server, not asked of the client. - CSV and JSON out. ## Browsing and editing - **Explorer** with lazy schema, table and column introspection and a short-lived cache. - **Table view**: sort, filter, page, edit cells, insert and delete rows, with a side panel for the JSON column that is unreadable in a grid. - **Select cells** in either grid — click, Shift-click, drag, or Shift+arrows in the table view for a rectangle; Ctrl/Cmd-click to add or remove individual cells anywhere across rows and columns. With more than one cell selected, the bottom of the panel says what they add up to: `sum`, `avg`, `min`, `max` for numbers, `distinct` for everything else, and how many of them are null. `Ctrl/Cmd+C` copies selected cells as tab-separated rows. Disjoint selections copy in row/column order, omitting gaps. Shift-click returns to a rectangle from the original anchor; a plain click starts over. - **The total is of what is highlighted**, not of the table behind it. The bar counts the cells first for exactly that reason: a `sum` that quietly meant the whole table would be a lie told in small type. - **Object view**: columns, arguments, indexes, constraints, triggers, grants, statistics and DDL from one catalog call. Column edits show you the SQL before they run it. - **Four engines, honestly.** Each adapter declares what it can actually do, so SQLite's narrow `ALTER` is reflected in the interface rather than failing at runtime. ## Organising a database - **Domains** group objects by what they are for — billing, identity, the reporting tables nobody owns — because `information_schema` cannot tell you which tables are billing. Domains export to a directory or a git repository, and import somewhere else. Sync includes each table's or view's triggers in its SQL file, after the object definition and before grants. The DDL tab shows the same definitions. PostgreSQL trigger functions remain separate routines: tag them too if you want their bodies in the export. - **Access report** answers "who can read this" across a schema or a domain, and refuses above a cell count rather than timing out. - **Datasource paths** let a datasource point at a directory on the host that the sidebar then browses. ## Working with other people - Workspace files, presence, and follow mode. - Queries other people ran, each under their own identity, with an audit trail. - **Roles you define**: a role is a name and a set of capabilities — run queries, tag domains, run the sync, manage the MCP server, sixteen of them — edited as a matrix and checked on every action rather than at the door. Owner, editor and viewer are there in every project as the ranks they always were. ## Git Off by default, and enabled per deployment. - **Git datasources**: clone a repository and treat its SQL and documentation as part of the project. - **Commit controls** on the domain export, so a schema snapshot lands in version control as a reviewable change. - **Repo commands**: a repository's own `.datagripe/run.yaml` can declare commands DataGripe may run. This has a separate switch from the rest of git on purpose — every other git feature reads and writes files, and this one executes a program somebody else wrote. Nothing runs until a person approves the list, and any change to it needs a fresh approval. ## MCP The switch is in the sidebar's **MCP Server** header, and the section wears a green frame while the server is running, because whether something outside the app can read a project is not something you should have to open a panel to check. Click the MCP Server title to open its management tab for mode, tokens and independent domain-management, sync and Git opt-ins. Agents can manage domains and object assignments, preview or write sync snapshots, and inspect Git status, commit and push. Writes require read/write mode and editor access. See [MCP](/docs/mcp/) for the gates and commit scope. Every project can expose an endpoint an AI agent connects to, so the agent reads the project's own documentation and queries its datasources under the same rules a person gets. Off per project until an owner turns it on, and read-only until they say otherwise — a read-only project cannot change a row no matter what it is asked to run. An MCP query is an execution like any other: it appears in history, with the token's name beside it. ## Getting in - **No accounts at all** for the personal and desktop shapes. - **Accounts** for a shared deployment, with a [security key](/docs/authentication/) as an alternative to a password — sign-in is usernameless, so there is no email to type and none to leak by asking about. - Signup closes after the first account unless you say otherwise.