---
title: "Document SQL with business context - Atlan MCP Cookbook"
url: "https://atlan.com/mcp-cookbook/document-sql-with-business-context/"
description: "Generate business-readable descriptions for SQL models from the context already in Atlan."
---

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Recipe 16 in [The Atlan MCP Cookbook](https://atlan.com/mcp-cookbook/). Generate business-readable descriptions for SQL models from the context already in Atlan.

Use case: Make data understandable / Action: Make changes / Persona: AI Builder, Data Engineer / Effort: Moderate / Runs in: any AI tool

Requires Atlan MCP connected to your AI tool: [set up Atlan MCP](https://docs.atlan.com/product/capabilities/atlan-ai/how-tos/remote-mcp-overview).

## 1. The task

**Scenario.** Your monthly_revenue_summary dbt model is documented in the way models usually are: a note about the SQL, nothing about what it means to the business. You want a description a stakeholder can read, built from the glossary terms and descriptions its source tables already carry in Atlan.

The ask:
- The Atlan descriptions and glossary terms for the model's source tables
- A business-friendly description of what the model calculates and who it is for
- The description saved back to the model in Atlan

Hero prompt: "For the monthly_revenue_summary model in dbt, look up the Atlan descriptions and glossary terms for its source tables and write a business-friendly description explaining what it calculates and who it's for."

Step by step:

1. Retrieve glossary terms and descriptions for the source assets. Prompt: "Look up the Atlan descriptions and glossary terms for [model]'s source tables."
2. Generate a business-readable description for the model. Prompt: "Write a business-friendly description of what [model] calculates and who it's for."
3. Write the description back to the asset in Atlan. Prompt: "Save it to the [model] asset in Atlan."

## 2. What you'll give it

Required context:
- The model to document (monthly_revenue_summary)
- Glossary terms that exist for its source assets
- Permission to write the description back

Optional context:
- The audience for the description (an exec reader versus an analyst)
- A house format, such as description plus "used by" plus grain

## 3. What Atlan creates

Outputs:
- The descriptions and glossary terms of the model's source tables, pulled together
- A business-readable description of what the model calculates and who uses it
- The description saved to the model in Atlan

**Summary.** The model gets documentation a stakeholder can actually read, built from context you already curated, so the description writes itself once the glossary is in place.

**Writes to Atlan.** Changed: the description on the monthly_revenue_summary model. Left untouched: the source tables and their terms, which are read to write the description, and the model's SQL.

## 4. Follow-up prompts

- **Do the layer:** "Do the same for every model in the revenue folder that has no business description."
- **Add the grain:** "Extend the description with the model's grain and refresh cadence."
- **Flag the gaps:** "If a source table has no glossary term, tell me, so I can define it before documenting the model."

## 5. Tips & troubleshooting

**Cook's note.** Start from the source tables' terms. The description writes itself once the glossary is there.

- Match the tool to the work. Writing readable prose is close-reading work; use a more capable model, review the draft, then save.
- Automate or chain it. Chain it to your dbt build: on a new or changed model, draft the business description for review before it ships.
- Ask what it changed. Add "confirm which model you wrote the description to." A one-line check that the write landed on the right asset.

## Related recipes

- [Grow your business glossary](https://atlan.com/mcp-cookbook/grow-your-business-glossary/): Bootstrap glossary terms from how your assets already use business concepts.
- [Enrich assets with your context](https://atlan.com/mcp-cookbook/enrich-assets-with-your-context/): Bring context that lives outside Atlan, like a spreadsheet or a Confluence page, onto your assets as owners, tags, and richer descriptions.
- [Trace a broken dashboard to its root cause](https://atlan.com/mcp-cookbook/trace-a-broken-dashboard-to-its-root-cause/): Trace lineage upstream from a broken dashboard to find the source of wrong numbers.

[Browse all recipes](https://atlan.com/mcp-cookbook/) / [Set up Atlan MCP](https://docs.atlan.com/product/capabilities/atlan-ai/how-tos/remote-mcp-overview)