PUDL Data and Metadata Guide

Use this skill for data-user workflows: reading PUDL outputs, understanding table and field semantics, tracing source context, and interpreting methodology.

Trigger phrases

• "show me this PUDL table in a notebook"
• "how do I read table X from Parquet"
• "load this table from local PUDL output"
• "read this PUDL table from S3"
• "what columns are in this table"
• "what does this column mean"
• "show table metadata for X"
• "which data source does this table come from"
• "find field descriptions for this table"
• "I need notebook code to explore this PUDL data"

Audience and scope

• Primary audience: analysts and data users, not core maintainers.
• Focus: using outputs and metadata confidently without digging into internals.
• Secondary audience: developers who need the same data context while coding.

Source-of-truth policy

The reference files in this skill are the canonical AI-facing layer for:

• data access and output usage patterns,
• table/field/source metadata retrieval,
• source-doc and methodology interpretation.

pudl-dev should reuse these references instead of duplicating them.

Reference index

• Data Access and Outputs
• Metadata and Querying
• Data Sources, Dictionaries, and Methodology

Escalation boundary

If a task requires modifying ETL code, schema migrations, dbt tests, or CI workflow, hand off to pudl-dev and keep these references as the shared data context.