Trust, Two Truths, and the Coming Agent Swarm

Organizations face a 'trust tax' when different teams define the same metrics differently, leading to conflicting reports. As AI agents enter analytics workflows, this problem will scale dramatically — agents can generate many conflicting answers quickly and confidently. Self-service BI tools democratized data access but not shared meaning. AI layered on top of inconsistent definitions won't fix the problem; it will amplify it. The solution is a semantic layer: a formal, code-defined contract that standardizes business metric definitions so AI agents have an unambiguous foundation to query from. JetBrains' Databao product is positioned as an agentic platform built around this governed semantic layer concept.