Datadef

Hi IH 👋

I’m a data/IT consultant who’s spent years working with engineering teams in media and renewable energy. Again and again, I saw the same frustration: documenting data lineage and metadata was a nightmare.

Most teams relied on messy Excel sheets, static diagrams, or just tribal knowledge. It slowed down onboarding, made governance a headache, and killed productivity. The worst part? Brilliant engineers were spending more time on documentation than actually building.

That’s why I started working on Datadef. It’s a web app that lets data engineers and architects:

• Visualize lineage and table relationships on an interactive canvas

• Manage metadata in one place

• Auto-generate clear documentation for governance and compliance

Basically, it’s like Miro/Excalidraw for data lineage, but with governance baked in.

Right now, I’ve just finished the first working version and I want to share it with the world. My goal is to learn, get feedback, and see if other data folks feel the same pain I’ve seen so many times.

If you’ve struggled with data documentation or lineage, I’d love your feedback on Datadef. Does this solve a real problem for you? What would make it more useful?

Thanks for reading, and thanks to this community — seeing all of you ship and share gave me the courage to put this out there.