Yandex DataLens

DataLens

DataLens is a business intelligence and data visualization system: it connects to databases, models the data into datasets, and renders charts and dashboards on top of them. It is offered as a managed service in Yandex Cloud, deployed on-premise, and run internally at Yandex.

This file orients and routes. It does not teach any one interface — pick the interface below and follow the skill that owns it.

Data flow

database → connection → source → dataset → chart → dashboard

• connection — credentials and driver for one database.
• source — a table or a SQL query exposed by that connection.
• dataset — the modelling layer: fields, calculated fields, joins, parameters, row-level security.
• chart — one visualization. Wizard charts sit on a dataset; QL charts skip the dataset and query a connection directly; editor charts are custom JavaScript.
• dashboard — tabs, widgets, selectors, and layout over charts.

Build left to right and reference by id. Deleting upstream breaks everything downstream.

Object model

Where entries are filed — a separate axis from the flow above. Connections, datasets, charts, and dashboards are all entries, and entries live in a container tree. Two schemes exist, and which one is available differs per installation:

newer    collection
           ├── collection …            nested, arbitrarily deep
           └── workbook
                 └── entries           connection, dataset, chart, dashboard

older    folder tree, path-addressed   e.g. Users/someone/reports
           └── entries                 held directly, no workbook in between

The workbook is the unit of grouping and permissions in the newer scheme; the folder path plays that role in the older one. Never assume which is available — an installation may offer one, the other, or both, so establish it the way the interface skill tells you rather than writing path-based logic against a workbook-only deployment.

Installations

Never assume which one is in play — hosts, auth, and the available connectors and chart types all differ. Establish it before writing anything that talks to an API.

Yandex Cloud is the managed service. On-premise covers both the open-source self-host (docker compose, UI on :8080) and the commercial enterprise build. Yandex Team is the internal Yandex installation — see Installation-specific detail below before answering anything specific to it.

Tool-specific skills detect the installation for you — the SDK, for instance, ships a preflight that reports it. Do not hand-roll detection.

Choosing an interface

SDK vs MCP. The SDK is the default for anything scripted, repeatable, or committed to a repository — it is typed, it has a documented object model, and the work survives as code. The MCP server suits interactive one-offs inside an agent session: it fetches the API's OpenAPI spec at startup and exposes a three-tool gateway (list_commands → describe_commands → invoke_command) instead of hundreds of tools. Do not mix them for one task.

The HTTP API, when neither fits. The SDK and the MCP server are both built on it, so reach for it directly only where they fall short. It is an HTTP API in an RPC style rather than a REST one: you call named commands with JSON payloads, not resources. It is also self-describing — fetch the OpenAPI spec from /json/ on the installation's API host (Installations above; https://api.datalens.tech/json/ on the cloud) and work from the spec rather than guessing command names or payload shapes. On the cloud the organization id is required, sent as an x-dl-org-id header.

Installation-specific detail

Two installations withhold something you need, and in both cases the answer is to ask rather than to fill the gap yourself.

Yandex Team is extended by a skill distributed separately, datalens-yateam. If it is present in the available skills list and the environment targets that installation, invoke it: it adds and overrides installation-specific detail from this file, and it wins where the two disagree. If the task concerns Yandex Team and the skill is not in the list, stop and ask the user to install it, following the instructions at https://datalens.yandex-team.ru/get-skills. Do not reconstruct its content in the meantime — say which part of the answer is installation-dependent and leave it there.

On-premise publishes no endpoints, and the API does not necessarily sit on the UI's host. Stop and ask the user for both — the DataLens endpoint and the DataLens API endpoint — before writing anything that talks to either. Do not derive one from the other, do not fall back to a cloud default, and do not carry on with a placeholder.

Out of scope

State the boundary and stop rather than improvising an adjacent solution:

• What a metric means for the business, or whether a number looks right.
• Screenshotting or driving the web UI.
• Embedding DataLens in another product, or iframes.
• SQL and analysis that does not touch DataLens entities.