---
title: What is CluedIn?
url: http://0.0.0.0:4000/get-started/what-is-cluedin
content_type: concept
section: Get started
---

# What is CluedIn?

> concept: Explains how something works.

CluedIn is a master data management platform. It ingests records from every system you connect to it, works out which of those records describe the same real-world thing, and produces one **golden record** per thing - with the full history of where each value came from.

## What the platform does

| Stage | What happens | Where it is documented |
|---|---|---|
| Ingest | Records arrive from files, databases, endpoints and connectors, and are mapped onto your model. | [Ingest](http://0.0.0.0:4000/ingest.md) |
| Model | Business domains, vocabularies and identifiers describe what the data means. | [Model](http://0.0.0.0:4000/model.md) |
| Master | Duplicates are found and merged into golden records. | [Master](http://0.0.0.0:4000/master.md) |
| Govern & improve | Clean projects, rules, enrichers and tags raise and hold data quality. | [Govern & improve](http://0.0.0.0:4000/govern.md) |
| Publish & consume | Streams, export targets, GraphQL and REST deliver the trusted data onward. | [Publish & consume](http://0.0.0.0:4000/publish.md) |

The two supporting areas are [Administer](http://0.0.0.0:4000/administer.md) - managing the product - and [Deploy & operate](http://0.0.0.0:4000/operate.md) - running the installation.

## What makes it different

CluedIn does not require you to agree on a schema before you load data. Records are ingested as they are, described with vocabularies, and connected through identifiers as evidence arrives. That property is called [eventual connectivity](http://0.0.0.0:4000/get-started/core-concepts/eventual-connectivity.md), and it is the idea most worth understanding before anything else.

## Next

- New to the product: [Quickstart](http://0.0.0.0:4000/get-started/quickstart.md)
- Want the vocabulary first: [Core concepts](http://0.0.0.0:4000/get-started/core-concepts.md) and [Terminology](http://0.0.0.0:4000/get-started/terminology.md)
- Learning for a specific role: [Learning paths](http://0.0.0.0:4000/learning-paths.md)

Up: [Get started](http://0.0.0.0:4000/get-started.md)