The answer path

The problem dst answers has two familiar failure modes, and they are the same problem. Either data access is locked down — someone got burned, a gate went up, the data team became a ticket queue — or it is open chaos — everyone connects however they want, and nobody knows an answer was wrong until something downstream breaks. Both happen because no one owns the path from a question to an answer. AI agents turn the second failure from untidy into catastrophic: a wrong definition a human quietly catches, an agent propagates into a thousand decisions at machine speed.

The reflex fix is to give the agent more context — point it at the catalog, hand it the data dictionary. That still leaves the agent holding warehouse credentials and authoring its own SQL: a better-informed agent with the same unchecked reach. The governable thing is the path from question to answer:

caller ──▶ dst ──▶ warehouse
agents      lens · canon        read-only,
analysts    certified patterns  guarded SQL
apps        receipts · refusal

The caller asks; a governed layer answers; the caller never touches the warehouse. Govern that path and access, cost, scope, and correctness all become enforceable in one place.

Bet

This is the architectural stance the product defends — see Compared to the industry for where the line sits against context-path tools.

— tagged [bet] in the source; not yet a measured claim