What is data?
Data is the stuff your app remembers — facts written down in a structured way.
Mental model
Plain English
Data is anything the app needs to remember: names, dates, messages, prices. Each piece of data has a shape — a wedding has a title, a date, a venue. Data without shape is just noise.
Data is the index cards in a filing cabinet. Each card has labeled lines (title, date, venue). The shape is the same on every card so you can find what you need.
A wedding record = { coupleName, eventDate, venue, guestCount }. Each task = { title, dueDate, status, weddingId }.
A conversation record = { channel, contactId, lastMessageAt, assignedAgentId, status }.
Go deeper
Facts the app remembers, written in a fixed shape.
Common mistakes
- Treating data as 'whatever I type on the screen'. Data is the saved record, not the form draft.
- Inventing new fields on the fly. Every field should exist in the schema.
AI-agent trap
Summary
Data lives in records. Each record has fields. Records of the same kind are grouped into a table. The shape is called the schema.