Federation turns an external system into something a workbook can query — three faces from one toolkit.

Read. SELECT … FROM <entity> routes to a data-source plugin. Any JSON API works with zero code: declare it in a plugin manifest and the generic HTTP source fetches it.

#+SLOT:      data-source
#+ENTITIES:  github-issue
#+IMPL:      Workbooks.DataSource.Http
#+URL:       https://api.github.com/repos/acme/app/issues
#+ROWS_PATH: .
#+ENV_KEYS:  GITHUB_TOKEN

Source. The credential resolves through a broker — the plugin never holds the key, and the host owns the egress.

Sync. An optional daemon pulls the source on an interval and mirrors its rows into local :task: nodes — a resident, queryable mirror, airgapped from the agent.

Linear, Asana, GitHub, your own service — each is either the generic HTTP source with a different URL, or a small custom query module that translates to its API.

• The shape: The six shapes