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Understand how descriptions are stored

TL;DR

Learn where Atlan stores the three kinds of asset description, which one appears in the UI, and what happens when you accept or edit an AI-generated description.

Your AI can read this via Docs MCPcurl -fsSL "https://docs.atlan.com/install-docs-mcp" | bashConnect

An asset in Atlan can hold three descriptions at once, written by three different sources. Knowing which is which explains most questions about enrichment—why an agent skipped an asset, which description appears on the asset profile, and what changes when you accept an AI suggestion.

Three kinds of description​

DescriptionWritten byExample
Source descriptionYour source system, during a crawlA Snowflake COMMENT on a table
User descriptionA person in AtlanSomeone edits the description field on an asset
AI-generated descriptionA context agentThe Description agent enriches a collection

These are stored separately. Clearing one doesn't clear the others, and each is updated by its own process.

Which description appears​

When an asset has more than one, Atlan displays them in this order:

  1. User description
  2. AI-generated description
  3. Source description

The highest one present wins. An AI-generated description appears ahead of a description crawled from your source system, and both give way to one your team wrote.

AI-generated descriptions carry a sparkle icon so you can tell at a glance where the text came from.

Lineage cards don't show descriptions

Asset cards in a lineage graph don't display a description at all, whichever ones the asset holds.

What agents skip, and why​

A context agent enriches an asset only when all three descriptions are empty. If any one of them holds a value, the agent skips that asset and moves on.

This is why an asset with a source description is skipped even though nobody in Atlan has documented it. As far as the agent is concerned, a description already exists.

Two consequences worth planning around:

  • Crawlers re-apply source descriptions. If your source system holds a description and you clear it in Atlan, the next crawl writes it back—and the asset becomes ineligible for enrichment again. To enrich it, remove the description at the source or stop the crawler from overwriting it.
  • Blank-looking values count as blank. Empty text, spaces, and the literal word None are treated as no description when an agent runs across a collection, so those assets stay eligible. The Generate button on an individual asset is stricter: it treats any existing text, including the literal word None, as a real description and won't regenerate over it.

Agents write only to the AI-generated description. No agent overwrites your source or user descriptions—only you can change those, by accepting or editing a suggestion as described below.

Accepting or editing AI descriptions​

An AI-generated description stays on the asset once written, so you can accept it later—including after someone on your team has added a description of their own in the meantime. What accepting does depends on whether you edit the text first, and whether that team description now exists.

  • Accept it as written, on an asset with no description of your own: the text stays an AI-generated description. It keeps its sparkle icon and still counts as AI-generated in search filters.
  • Accept it as written, on an asset that has since gained your team's description: the text replaces that description and becomes your team's, and the AI-generated one is cleared.
  • Edit it before saving: the text becomes your team's description, and the AI-generated one is cleared.

In the last two cases the asset stops matching AI-generated filters, because the description is now attributed to your team rather than the agent. That's also the route to take when you want a description to reach your source system, since only your team's descriptions are pushed back.