Seshat BI

Seshat BI

From messy retail data to trusted Power BI -- with evidence at every gate.

The readiness system that lets AI agents build your BI pipeline, but never lets them approve it. Seshat profiles sources, governs mappings, validates the medallion warehouse, binds metrics to contracts, and gates Power BI delivery. Every step is backed by committed evidence, and every judgment call by a named human approval.

**Try it in 60 seconds** · **Install** · **How it works** · **What's new in 3.0** · **Contribute**

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Try it in 60 seconds

Run the bundled synthetic retail demo. All you need is uv, which fetches a matching Python if you lack one. You do not need a database, Power BI Desktop, or an account.

uvx --from seshat-bi seshat demo init
uvx --from seshat-bi seshat demo run
uvx --from seshat-bi seshat demo report --format html

Open the readiness proof it wrote to .seshat-output/demo/index.html:

start .seshat-output\demo\index.html      # Windows
open .seshat-output/demo/index.html       # macOS
xdg-open .seshat-output/demo/index.html   # Linux

Prefer a persistent install? Run pipx install seshat-bi once, then drop the uvx --from seshat-bi prefix: seshat demo init, seshat demo run, seshat demo report --format html. Leave off --format html to print the same report in the terminal.

What you just saw

• The committed demo fixture records three passing stages, each citing its evidence: the source profile (24 rows, order_id unique), the cleared source map, and the authored silver migration.
• Gold is blocked, on purpose. Its gate is a live seshat validate run against a real database, and the demo never runs one, so it caps Gold at blocked. Seshat names that reason instead of pretending the stage passed.
• The approvals are labelled. The demo's approvals are marked illustrative fixture, not produced by this run. Seshat never fabricates a sign-off.
• One next action. The report names the single step that is allowed next. There is no score to game.

That honest "blocked" is the product. A tool that turns every stage green without a database behind it is guessing.

Why Seshat BI

A dashboard can look finished while its metrics are undefined, its source assumptions are unsafe, and its totals have never been reconciled. AI agents make this worse: they produce a plausible-looking model fast, then quietly decide the grain, the PII handling, and what "revenue" means.

Seshat BI answers one question, and it never makes up the answer:

Is this retail source ready to become trusted Power BI?

Named for the ancient Egyptian figure of writing, measurement, and record keeping, Seshat brings the same discipline to modern analytics: map meaning, record evidence, then build.

Seven gates between raw data and publication

A stage can begin only after the stage before it passes. The sequence is the product.

flowchart LR
    S1[1. Source] --> S2[2. Mapping] --> S3[3. Silver] --> S4[4. Gold]
    S4 --> S5[5. Semantic Model] --> S6[6. Dashboard] --> S7[7. Publish]

    classDef stage fill:#001E35,stroke:#C69214,stroke-width:1.5px,color:#F7F1E7;
    class S1,S2,S3,S4,S5,S6,S7 stage;

Source -> Mapping -> Silver -> Gold -> Semantic Model -> Dashboard -> Publish

[!IMPORTANT] Seshat never self-grants an approval, invents source meaning, or turns a green static check into a claim of live semantic correctness.

How it works

flowchart LR
    RAW([Retail source]) --> B[(bronze)] --> S[(silver)] --> G[(gold)] --> PBI[Power BI PBIP]
    MAP{{Source map}} -. clears .-> S
    CHECK{{seshat check}} -. static gates .-> S
    CHECK -. static gates .-> G
    LIVE{{seshat validate}} -. live boundary .-> G
    CONTRACT{{Metric contracts}} -. govern measures .-> PBI
    HUMAN([Named human approvals]) -. authorize decisions .-> MAP
    HUMAN -. authorize publication .-> PBI

Data flows from the retail source through bronze, silver, and gold into a source-controlled Power BI PBIP project. Four kinds of gate sit along that path:

• a source map that must be cleared before silver,
• seshat check, which runs static gates over silver and gold,
• seshat validate, which checks gold against the live database, and
• metric contracts, which govern every Power BI measure.

Named human approvals authorize the mapping decisions and the publication.

The agent is the interface. You work through Claude Code, Codex, or the local Studio console. seshat status tells the agent where each table stands, seshat next gives it the one allowed next action, and seshat check / seshat validate are the gates it must pass. The CLI is the engine, not the experience.

Choose your path

What's new in 3.0

v3.0.0 is a major release, and the reason matters: it adds very little and tightens a lot. An expert-board audit closed places where a gate could pass on an absent, uncommitted, or unparseable input. Those gates now refuse.

• Approvals must be committed. Approval-bearing surfaces read HEAD, not the working tree, and a stage's approval must come from that stage's authority.
• Stricter secret scanning. C2 now also flags tracked .env.local-style files, filled *_TOKEN / *_SECRET keys in .env.example, and DSNs in UTF-16 files.
• Safer resets and git reads. seshat reset refuses to delete uncommitted work unless --discard-uncommitted is passed, and git reads refuse reflog revisions.
• dbt and Dagster gates read committed state. A zero-asset run no longer counts as success.
• New opt-in and additive surfaces. seshat next --exit-code, extra seshat doctor --format json keys, and table-scoped Studio conversations.

No rule id was added, removed, or renamed. Upgrading from 2.x? Read the v3.0 release note and migration table first: a repo that was green on v2.1 can turn red, and that is deliberate.

What is built today

Seshat BI is an active beta on PyPI. The PyPI badge above shows the current release. The shipped system includes:

• Static and live governance gates over SQL, TMDL/PBIR, DAX, configuration, documentation, keys, date coverage, orphan relationships, and reconciliation.
• Seven-stage agent control surfaces through seshat status and seshat next, grounded in committed evidence rather than a separate run-state engine.
• Governed source mapping and metric contracts that stop transformation or dashboard work while business meaning is unresolved, including governed two-table ratios.
• DAX governance and generation through static rules, contract-drift checks, live value proxies, and verified measure generation.
• Governed statistical evidence. seshat analyze runs a closed catalog of governed methods over approved metrics, then stops for named-human review without changing readiness.
• Portable proof surfaces: offline HTML, review JSON, SARIF, a GitHub Action, readiness passports, and an offline portfolio explorer.
• A read-only MCP governor (seshat mcp, [mcp] extra) that exposes governance state to local MCP clients over stdio and refuses execution and approval by construction. It is listed in Awesome MCP Servers and scored on Glama.
• Governed extension packs, plus optional dbt and Dagster adapters that stay advisory and never create readiness truth.
• Source-controlled Power BI workflows with deterministic PBIR authoring helpers and a read-only assessment path for existing PBIP projects.
• Seshat Studio, a local analyst console (seshat-studio, [studio] extra). Its browser views show workspace readiness, per-table journeys, and the agent conversation over the same committed evidence. Operations, run history, and client review ship as API endpoints with no browser views yet. Studio surfaces the gates and never grants an approval of its own.

The capability inventory, release history, and roadmap hold the evidence behind each claim.

[!WARNING] Power BI writes are gated, not free. The governed local write leg (F016 slice 5, seshat pbi-mcp plan-write / apply) ships and refuses to act without an approved, in-scope target. The remote leg remains deferred and owner-gated. Building the final approved page in Power BI Desktop remains a named human action. See ADR 0018 for what was unparked and what was not.

Install

Python CLI

# Core CLI: static checks, readiness status, and the offline demo
pipx install seshat-bi

# ...or run any command without installing
uvx --from seshat-bi seshat --version

# Start a governed workspace
seshat init-project my-bi

The base install depends only on PyYAML. Everything heavier is an opt-in extra:

Already installed? Add an extra's packages in place, for example pipx inject seshat-bi psycopg2-binary for db.

Live validation reads a DSN stored only in a gitignored .env. Copy .env.example to .env and fill in your own values. If the database driver or the mcp, dbt, or studio extra is missing, Seshat prints the exact pipx inject / pip install fix instead of an import traceback.

seshat is the primary command. retail is a deprecated alias, kept for one deprecation cycle.

The statistical provider is read-only and initially PostgreSQL-only. Offline local CSV evidence needs no database. See the architecture boundary and the synthetic workflow.

Agent plugins

Claude Code

/plugin marketplace add Kemetra/Seshat-BI
/plugin install seshat-bi@seshat-bi-marketplace

Codex

codex plugin marketplace add https://github.com/Kemetra/Seshat-BI
codex plugin add seshat-bi@seshat-bi-repository

Detailed setup: user install | agent install | support matrix

Who it's for

• BI developers who want Power BI models that trace back to governed gold tables.
• Analytics engineers and data engineers running a bronze -> silver -> gold warehouse who need gates that fail closed.
• Analytics leaders who need to know which numbers are safe to put in front of executives, and who approved them.
• Teams building AI agents that must stay truthful around real business data.

Contributing

You don't need to learn the whole readiness system before making a useful first contribution. Seshat provides bounded lanes, each with owned files, forbidden scope, acceptance evidence, and exact verification commands.

1. Read the first-contribution guide.
2. Pick one lane from contribution-lanes.yaml.
3. Claim a starter contribution.
4. Follow the setup and pull-request checks in CONTRIBUTING.md.

Contributions are especially welcome in governance rules, database compatibility, synthetic fixtures, documentation, Power BI artifacts, and agent workflows.

Sponsor Seshat BI

Trusted BI infrastructure is public-interest work. The rules, examples, tests, and documentation should stay inspectable by the teams that depend on them. Sponsorship can speed up public, evidence-backed roadmap lanes such as:

• database compatibility and live-validation evidence,
• reproducible demo fixtures and cross-engine coverage,
• documentation, onboarding, accessibility, and contributor support,
• agent-safety research around analytics approvals and disclosure boundaries.

The guardrail is simple: funding supports the work. It never buys a readiness approval, a rule exception, or an undisclosed product claim.

**Sponsor Seshat BI through GitHub Sponsors** · **Discuss a public roadmap sponsorship**

For organization-level sponsorships or roadmap discussions, use the issue link only for non-confidential context. Do not post procurement, client, or payment information in a public issue.

Repository guide

Where the system lives

Essential documentation

Deliberate boundaries

Seshat BI is a governed Retail BI factory. It is not a one-click dashboard generator, a Fabric deployment platform, a universal ERP connector, or an automated approval engine. New automation is valuable only when it strengthens one readiness stage without taking a decision away from its accountable human owner.

License

Seshat BI is available under the Apache License 2.0.

Governed knowledge. Measured structure. Trusted BI.

If Seshat BI stopped a bad number before it reached a meeting, or you think it should, **star the repo**. ⭐ It is the simplest way to help other analytics teams find it.

Seshat BI -- built in public for analytics people who would rather stop a bad number than decorate it.