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Canvas annotations

Prophecy enhances pipeline readability and comprehension through several annotation features:

  • Gem comments: Copilot generates comments and documentation for individual pipeline components (gems), providing context and explaining complex transformations. You can also create and update gem comments yourself.
  • Canvas annotations: Add free-form text annotations directly on the pipeline canvas, highlighting key steps, providing explanations, or documenting assumptions.
  • Gem labels and icons: Labels and icons on each gem allow users to visually categorize and identify pipeline components, improving overall pipeline clarity and organization.

In many cases, pipelines can become quite large to accommodate complex transformation requirements. Learn how to add canvas annotations in the following sections.

Add an annotation​

To add an annotation to a pipeline:

  1. Open a pipeline in a project.
  2. Click on the annotate button in the bottom left corner of the canvas.
  3. Drag the text box to your desired location in the canvas.
  4. Add your own text or image to the annotation.
  5. Format the text using the formatting toolbar.

Example​

Let’s say you have a pipeline that ingests customer data, cleans it, and then applies transformations before loading it into a database. To help your team understand the different stages, you can add annotations like this:

  • Add an annotation near the input source stating: Ingesting raw CSV files from S3 bucket
  • Annotate above the transformation gems with: Removing duplicates and normalizing column names
  • Mark next to a Macro gem: Using imported dbt Pivot macro
  • Add an annotation near the last node saying: Writing transformed data to Databricks catalog

This helps your team quickly grasp what each part of the pipeline does without digging into the details of every transformation.