# Starter Edition Overview

Starter Edition is ADI for individual developers, data engineers, and analysts. It adds semantic and control functionality to the agents and agentic workflows they use for data analytics, delivered as a plugin that bundles the ADI Skills and MCP server, for coding agents and IDEs.

## Who it is for

Starter Edition is built for people who work with coding agents and want their agent's data work to be governed and consistent. That includes:

- Developers building AI agents that need reliable, meaning-aware data access
- Data engineers extending their IDE-based agents with semantic understanding and enforcement
- Analysts using AI agents to query data with correctness built in

## How it is delivered

The primary way to install Starter Edition is the **ADI plugin**, which bundles both parts below into a single install. Dedicated plugins are available for Claude Code, Cursor, and Codex; see Getting Started for the install commands. OpenClaw, Manus, and any other coding agents that support either the Open Plugins Specification or the Agent Skills Specification can also use ADI, and this is also the route if you simply prefer installing the parts separately: install the two components individually.

**Skills** following the Agent Skills Specification. A Skill teaches an agent how to work with ADI: which tools to call, in what order, how to author and validate a contract, how to handle refusals, and how to present results. The same logical content works across supported platforms with minimal variation.

**MCP server** exposing ADI's tools over the Model Context Protocol, so the agent can discover capabilities, author and validate a contract, and generate contract-governed SQL.

Domain Packages for different data types are planned for future releases.

## Trust tiers

Starter Edition runs across three different trust tiers that reflect how much of the workflow the platform runs on your behalf.

With **t1**, ADI runs a hosted MCP server that your agent connects to. It generates and validates contract-governed SQL with full provenance, but does not execute it or read your warehouse: the contract is built from schema and context alone, and you run the generated SQL yourself. Your data never leaves your environment; ADI holds only the meaning and the rules.

Two further tiers are planned for future releases: **t0** (self-hosted) and **t2** (fully hosted with credentials). These are the execution tiers, where the server runs the generated SQL directly and gates execution by signature.

## What is included

- Discovery of the active trust tier, enabled tools, and features
- Contract authoring and machine validation against ADI's canonical schema
- Contract-governed SQL generation from business-language questions
- Governance defined in the contract and applied when SQL is generated (PII and disallowed group-bys, join safety, cardinality guardrails, read-only SQL)
- Provenance on every generated query, showing how the answer was derived
- Refusal handling with recovery information and safe alternatives

## How it compares to Enterprise Edition

Starter Edition focuses on individual developer workflows through coding agents which could be on local data, or connected to data warehouses via other connectors.

Enterprise Edition brings the same semantic and control layer to teams using copilots and agents on cloud data and analytics platforms, with fuller semantics, stricter governance, and a native app that runs inside the customer's own warehouse.

Both editions share the same control-plane principle: understand the data first, then hold every query to the contract.

## Current status

Starter Edition has graduated from Alpha testing and is entering a Closed Beta, ahead of a later Open Beta.

The Closed Beta puts the control plane in the hands of external testers. It checks three things: that the workflow holds on real data (connect, author and validate a contract, generate governed SQL, act on the results); that governance holds (disallowed group-bys, unsafe joins, and out-of-contract requests are refused with useful recovery information); and that the experience is smooth from setup to a first governed answer. An earlier internal alpha validated the core workflow, so this round focuses on real-world use rather than first-run setup.

Testers get direct access to the ADI team and help to shape what gets built next. Request early access at [agentic-data.com/access](https://agentic-data.com/access), follow Getting Started for setup, and see the Beta Notes and Known Issues page for current limitations and practical guidance.