Catalyst Datastore

PREREQUISITES — READ THIS FIRST

Before ANY Data Store operation, you MUST verify MCP connectivity.

• Search for CatalystbyZoho_* tools in your available tool list.
• If NOT found: STOP. Do NOT write any code, scaffold files, or instruct Console steps. Load catalyst-zoho-mcp skill and guide the user through MCP setup. Do NOT proceed until the user confirms CatalystbyZoho_* tools are visible.
• If found: Run CatalystbyZoho_List_All_Organizations → CatalystbyZoho_List_All_Projects to set project context, then continue to "How It Works".

Execution Checklist (MUST follow in order)

• Step 0: Confirm CatalystbyZoho_* tools visible → if none found → STOP, set up MCP first
• Step 1: Run CatalystbyZoho_List_All_Organizations
• Step 2: Run CatalystbyZoho_List_All_Projects
• Step 3: For table creation → CatalystbyZoho_Create_Table | For existing tables → CatalystbyZoho_List_All_Tables
• Step 4: Proceed with the operation

How It Works

1. Create or locate the table via MCP — Creating a table? Use CatalystbyZoho_Create_Table directly. Do NOT instruct the user to open the Catalyst Console or create the table manually. Reading/writing data? Use CatalystbyZoho_List_All_Tables to get table IDs. Never ask the user to copy table IDs.
2. Load references/datastore-basics.md — for CRUD operations, ZCQL syntax, result unwrapping, and permissions setup.
3. Unwrap ZCQL results — Always remind: rows.map(r => r.TableName). Raw ZCQL results are wrapped; accessing without unwrapping is the #1 Data Store bug.
4. Permissions — App User permissions are OFF by default. If the query involves a logged-in user reading data, check Console → Table → Scopes & Permissions.
5. Pagination — ZCQL max 300 rows per query. Use LIMIT offset, count for larger datasets.

Hallucination Guards

Never assert project-specific values from an empty or unread directory. If the working directory has no project files, do not invent or assume timezone, table names, project ID, environment names, or any other project-specific detail. Ask the developer to supply them.

• Timezone: do not state a timezone for ZCQL date queries unless you have read it from a real project config file. Ask the developer what timezone their project uses.
• Table names / column names: only use names returned by CatalystbyZoho_List_All_Tables or explicitly provided by the user.

Default to native Node.js response syntax. When writing function code alongside Data Store operations, use res.writeHead() + res.end() — not Express methods (res.status(), res.json()), unless the user explicitly chose the Express template.

Security Checklist

• App User write permissions are off by default. The App User role has SELECT enabled by default, but INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE must be manually enabled per table. Go to Console → Table → Scopes and Permissions → App User role → check Insert/Update/Delete for any table your authenticated users need to write.
• App Administrator has all permissions by default. Never assign the App Administrator role to regular end-users — it grants full read/write/delete access to all tables.

Triggers

Use this skill for: "Data Store", "ZCQL", "catalyst table", "create table", "query data", executeZCQLQuery, "table permissions", "App User permissions", "ROWID", "CREATEDTIME", "Data Store CRUD", "JOIN in ZCQL", "pagination ZCQL", "data store column types", "insert row", "update row", "delete row", or "relational data on Catalyst".

References