Atlas Best Practices

This pulls together the canonical patterns for Atlas schema migrations: declarative versus versioned workflows, when to baseline an existing database, and the plan-lint-apply cycle that keeps you from breaking production. It points you to the right reference doc whether you need environment setup, lint analyzers, or the v1.1 security and data features that shipped in February 2026. The real value is in the guardrails and the CLI edge cases that trip up agents, like migration directory maintenance and TLS URL pitfalls. Load it when you're configuring atlas.hcl or reviewing migration plans, not for basic SQL questions.

skills.sh installs: 154
GitHub stars: 48
last updated: Jun 3, 2026

View on GitHub

Install

$ npx -y skills add 0xbigboss/claude-code --skill atlas-best-practices --agent claude-code

Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.

Files

Atlas Best Practices

Atlas supports declarative and versioned schema workflows. Keep this file minimal and load only the reference file needed for the current task.

Workflow Selection

Use declarative workflow when desired schema state is the source of truth.
Use versioned workflow when migration files are required for auditing and staged deployments.
Use baseline workflow when onboarding an existing database.

Default Execution Flow

Confirm the target env in atlas.hcl.
Confirm dev is configured and isolated from production.
Plan first, then lint/test/validate, then apply.
Run production changes through CI/CD or approved deployment workflow.

Quick Commands

# Declarative
atlas schema apply --env local

# Versioned
atlas migrate diff add_change --env local
atlas migrate lint --env local --latest 1
atlas migrate apply --env local

# Integrity
atlas migrate validate --env local
atlas migrate status --env local