Database migrations
Curated, auditable, benchmark-ready Agent Skills library for Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Cursor, and more.
npx -y skills add shinzoxD/knackbox --skill database-migrationsAssembled from the repository path, not quoted from the project. Check it against their README if it does not work.
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Plan and review database schema migrations for safety and rollback. Use whenever the user writes migrations, alters tables, backfills data, adds indexes, or asks how to deploy schema changes without downtime or lock pain.
The file declares its own license as Apache-2.0. That is the author’s claim about this one file, and it is not the same thing as the license GitHub reports for the repository, which is listed with the other numbers below.
SKILL.md
2.0 KB, 348 tokens by cl100k_base, as published. Nobody here has run it
Database Migrations
Schema change is a production event. Expand/contract, avoid long locks, and never invent irreversible data loss as "fine".
Workflow
- State current schema, target schema, dialect, table size class if known.
- Classify: additive, destructive, rewrite, backfill, index-only.
- Prefer expand → migrate reads/writes → contract over in-place big bang.
- Call out locking, full table rewrites, and default-value rewrites on large tables.
- Plan online backfill (batched) separate from the schema DDL when needed.
- Define rollback / forward-fix and verification queries.
Output format
## Migration plan: <change>
**Dialect:** …
**Risk:** low | medium | high
### Steps
1. …
### SQL (or migration files)
…
### Locks / performance notes
…
### App deploy ordering
…
### Verify
…
### Rollback
…
Rules
- Never drop columns/tables before code stops reading them.
- Adding NOT NULL requires a default or multi-step backfill.
- Create indexes concurrently when the dialect and ops model support it.
- Separate long backfills from transactional DDL when possible.
- State assumptions about table size; ask if missing and risk depends on it.
- Do not run destructive SQL without an explicit user goal.
Edge cases
- Multi-service shared DB: coordinate expand/contract across deployables.
- Zero-downtime: dual-write or dual-read windows spelled out.
- Data repair: treat as a scripted job with dry-run counts, not a sneaky migration.
What ships with it: 1 file
1.4 KB alongside SKILL.md
benchmarks/
- prompts.json1.4 KB
Gives 0 of the 12 instructions most ship operate skills give in 348 tokens
Counted across 779 of the 1,178 authors here whose files we hold, read 2026-08-07
- Document a rollback plan before deploymentin 41 of 779, across 22 files
- Update the changelogin 21 of 779, across 19 files
- Run the test suitein 20 of 779
- Create an annotated git tagin 20 of 779
- Clean up feature flags after full rolloutin 18 of 779, across 10 files
- Verify deployment health after launchin 18 of 779, across 10 files
- Test both feature flag statesin 17 of 779, across 9 files
- Verify the working tree is cleanin 17 of 779
- Make database migrations backward-compatiblein 16 of 779, across 8 files
- Set up error monitoring before launchin 15 of 779, across 7 files
- Monitor metrics at each rollout stagein 14 of 779, across 5 files
- Create a GitHub releasein 14 of 779
Said here and by no other author read
- state current schema target schema dialect table size
- classify migration type
- prefer expand contract over big bang
- call out locking and table rewrites
- define rollback and verification queries
- require default for adding not null
Grouped from the skills themselves: near-identical wordings counted once, and counted by distinct author, so one author publishing three of these counts once. Length counted with cl100k_base; the agent that loads this file may tokenize it differently.