Sample mode

Sample mode runs Dynomatic against a DynamoDB-compatible database on your own machine, seeded with tables, items, saved queries, scripts, schemas, variable environments, and command history. Use it to try the app before connecting to AWS, or to explore a feature you are not entitled to on your current plan.

Enter sample mode

On the welcome screen, click Try sample data. If you already have a workspace connected, open Settings, then Onboarding, and enter sample mode from there.

Seeding runs in ten phases behind a progress panel and usually takes about ten seconds. When it finishes you land on a populated dashboard. If seeding fails, a panel explains why, sorting the cause into disk space, corrupt data, or a generic failure, and offers reset and retry. A log viewer and an in-app bug report are available from the same place.

What you get

The seed creates several tables covering different modeling styles.

• UniversitySingleTable is the flagship single-table design, roughly 2,600 items across 8 entities in a deliberately imperfect DeBrie-style convention, so data model inference has real structure to work on. It is classified production, which makes production badges, production-tier defaults, and the production guardrails reachable without a real AWS account.
• ProjectManagement is an ElectroDB schema and Commerce is a DynamoDB Toolbox schema. Commerce is classified staging, so you can see all three tiers at once.
• KnowledgeBase is the vector showcase, about 200 help-center articles with checked-in 64-dimension embeddings behind a cosine vector index. Find similar, the Vector search flavor, and the category scope pill all work with no embedding provider configured.
• Showcase tables cover other shapes, among them SessionsWithTtl, which carries a keys-only stream so the keys-only stream view is demonstrable without AWS, plus IndexShowcase, TypeZoo, LargeEvents, and UsersPostsComments.

Streams are enabled on the main tables and open with content. The seed issues a fixed burst of updates and deletes after the replay, so the stream history timeline shows MODIFY records with field-level diffs and REMOVE records next to the INSERT spike. The live tail still waits for your own edits, because nothing writes in the background.

Template variables are pre-seeded too. The sample workspace carries a workspace environment, a production-tier override, and a table override on UniversitySingleTable, and two saved queries plus a PartiQL script use ${[ … ]} tags, so running them shows the resolution chain at work.

Every gate is lifted

While the sample profile is the default profile, every feature gate is off regardless of your plan. A free account in sample mode gets data model inference, streams, scripting, schema-aware queries, PartiQL, command history, and the classification and production interface. An expired trial does not evict the sample session either. The trial-expired dialog still appears, and sample mode keeps running at full capability.

Exiting returns the gates to your real subscription with no intermediate paywall flash.

One workspace at a time

While a sample session exists the app is single-workspace. Real workspaces stay listed but are inert everywhere they could be focused, in the connections popover, the dashboard workspace chips, the profile picker, and the command palette’s Profiles group, each with the reason “Exit Sample Mode to use your real workspaces.” and a one-click exit. Opening a table that belongs to a real workspace is refused with the same explanation, and entering sample mode closes any real-workspace tabs.

What cannot work locally

Two things are inert, and each explains itself rather than producing a raw AWS error.

• S3 export, because the local database serves no S3.
• Point-in-time recovery, for the same reason.

Everything else behaves as it does on AWS, including consumed capacity, which the local database sizes the way DynamoDB does. The one exception is a vector search request’s byte count, which is labeled “· emulated” on history cards and in the vector run header.

Reset and exit

The violet Sample pill in the status bar carries the session’s actions, which are Reset, Exit sample mode, and View log, in that order.

Reset reseeds in place behind an itemized confirmation listing exactly what it removes, counting saved queries, history entries, favorites, recent tables, saved scripts, schema configs, saved schema queries, recent schemas, tab groups, and the workspace itself.

Exit sample mode restores your previous profile and deletes the local database file outright, so any table you created inside sample mode goes with it and the next entry seeds from scratch.

Warning: Exiting deletes the sample database. Anything you created inside sample mode, including tables you imported into, is gone.

What leaves your machine

All DynamoDB traffic stays on loopback. The app still contacts app.dynomatic.io for the update check in release builds and for the sign-in or trial verification tick. No crash or error telemetry leaves the machine. See Security and data.

The local database process never outlives the app. Quitting Dynomatic kills it and deletes the record naming it, and if the app is force-killed the next launch reaps the orphan before starting a replacement.