Overview
The Governance Agent ensures your data is trustworthy, well-documented, and traceable. It connects to OpenMetadata for catalog operations, uses Neo4j for lineage tracking, and runs data quality validations — giving you confidence that the data behind your decisions is accurate and compliant.What You Can Ask
- “Show me the lineage for the revenue table”
- “What tags are applied to our customer data?”
- “List all databases in our workspace”
- “Run a quality check on the orders dataset”
- “Generate a description for the marketing_leads table”
- “What glossary terms do we have for financial data?”
How It Works
- You ask a governance question — Anything about data quality, metadata, lineage, tags, glossaries, or catalog operations.
- Intent is classified — The agent determines whether you need metadata lookup, quality validation, lineage tracing, or description generation.
- Right tools are invoked — OpenMetadata MCP tools for catalog operations, Great Expectations for quality checks, or Neo4j for lineage queries.
- Results are delivered — Quality reports, lineage paths, metadata details, or updated descriptions are returned in a clear format.
Key Capabilities
Data Quality Validation
Runs automated quality checks using Great Expectations — completeness, accuracy, consistency, and freshness — with detailed per-column reports.
Lineage Tracking
Traces data from source through transformation to consumption via Neo4j graph queries. Know exactly where every data point comes from and what depends on it.
Metadata Catalog
Connects to OpenMetadata for full catalog operations — browse databases, search entities, explore schemas, manage tags, glossaries, and classifications.
Description Generation
Automatically generates business-friendly descriptions for data assets using AI analysis of metadata and sample data — then updates your catalog.
Catalog Operations
The Governance Agent connects to OpenMetadata via MCP (Model Context Protocol) for comprehensive catalog operations:| Category | What You Can Do |
|---|---|
| Tables & Schemas | Browse tables, schemas, and databases across your workspace |
| Search & Discovery | Search entities semantically, get suggestions for matching assets |
| Tags & Classifications | List and explore tags, classifications, and their assignments |
| Glossaries | Browse business glossaries and terms for shared vocabulary |
| Test Cases | View existing data quality test cases and test suites |
| Lineage | Trace upstream and downstream dependencies for any entity |
Data Lifecycle
How Lineage Works
Neo4j tracks relationships between every entity in your data estate:- Data Assets — What tables, files, and datasets exist across all sources
- Organizations — Which organization provided the data
- Workspaces — Which workspaces consume and analyze the data
- Transformations — How data was transformed (dbt models, Glue crawlers, SQL queries)
- Users — Who accessed and modified what, and when
Human-in-the-Loop
Quality validations include a human-in-the-loop step:- The agent analyzes your dataset and generates recommended quality expectations
- You’re presented with the list of proposed checks and can select which ones to run
- Only your approved expectations are executed against the data
- Results are returned with per-column pass/fail status and detailed statistics
Works With Other Agents
- Retrieval Agent — Governance policies determine what data is accessible and discoverable.
- Engineering Agent — Transformation lineage is tracked when dbt models are deployed.
- Analyst Agent — Quality scores inform confidence in analysis results.
- Metadata Agent — Collaborates on catalog maintenance, schema exploration, and data documentation.
- Quality Agent — Runs detailed quality validations as part of the governance workflow.
The Governance Agent is part of the BrightAgent architecture. See capabilities for the full list of what BrightAgent can do.