Querying Data Lake

Runs Athena SQL queries across Glue, S3 Tables, and Redshift catalogs with proper workgroup selection and cost tracking. It classifies statements before execution (SELECT versus DROP), delegates fuzzy table lookups to the finding skill, and profiles unfamiliar tables before analytical queries. The standout bit is how it handles catalog-specific addressing quirks (Redshift lowercase identifiers, cross-catalog qualifiers) and enforces confirmation gates for destructive operations. Works through AWS MCP server when available, falls back to CLI otherwise. Most useful when you need to query federated sources without manually wrangling workgroup configs or accidentally running unscoped queries that scan entire tables.

skills.sh installs: 7.1K
GitHub stars: 3.4K
last updated: Aug 21, 2026

View on GitHub

Install

$ npx -y skills add aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws --skill querying-data-lake --agent claude-code

Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.

Files

Query Data Lake

Execute SQL queries on Amazon Athena across default and federated catalogs (Glue, S3 Tables, Redshift) with workgroup selection, statement classification, and error recovery.

Overview

Executes and manages Athena SQL queries across default and federated catalogs. Selects a workgroup, resolves target assets (delegating fuzzy references to finding-data-lake-assets), classifies statements for safety, and reports cost and data scanned. Use the AWS MCP server for sandboxed execution and audit logging; the same AWS CLI commands work directly when the MCP server is not available.

Constraints for parameter acquisition:

You MUST accept a single optional argument: SQL text, a named-query name, a workgroup name, a catalog name, or profile TABLE_NAME
You MUST accept the argument as direct text or a pointer to a file containing SQL
You MUST ask the user for the target AWS region if not already set
You MUST confirm the output S3 location before executing any non-trivial query
You MUST respect the user's decision to abort at any step