Skills Data and integration
Evolving a conversation schema
A conversation schema is a contract between an unknown number of consumers: exporters, warehouse models, dashboards, notebooks, scripts and anything someone built once and left running. Changing it is easy; changing it without silently corrupting a historical series is the skill.
npx rulebase-skills install cx-schema-evolutionWhen to use it
Reach for this when someone says any of these — they are the phrases the skill itself triggers on:
- “we need to add a field to the schema”
- “changing the conversation schema”
- “our historical data doesn't match after the schema change”
How it works
The method, in the order the skill runs it. The full procedure — tables, worked examples and the edge cases — is in the skill itself.
Classify the change first
That last row is the dangerous one and it has no compile-time signal. Redefining what resolved_at means, or changing which conversations get channel = 'messaging', produces a step change in every series built on it and no error anywhere.
Dual-write is the mechanism that makes this safe
For anything breaking, the sequence is: Announce it, with a date, to the consumer register, Migrate consumers one at a time, verifying each, Verify nothing reads the old field, Then remove it, and only then.
Keep the series comparable, or say that you did not
This is the part that matters to the people using the data rather than building it.
Maintain a consumer register
You cannot manage a contract whose parties you do not know. The register is unglamorous and it is what makes every decision above possible: Who reads each field, from which system, for what, Who to tell when it changes, and how much notice they need, Which consumers are outside your control.
Additive-only is a strategy, not a cop-out
For a schema with many uncontrolled consumers, deciding that you only ever add and never change is a legitimate and often correct choice. The cost is accumulated cruft — deprecated fields that stay forever — and the benefit is that nothing downstream ever breaks.
Related skills
Free and open source, and vendor-neutral — it reads the conversations from whichever helpdesk you already run. Browse all 149 skills · connect your helpdesk over MCP · source on GitHub
