---
title: "Guides"
slug: "dev-catalog-guides"
updated: 2026-10-28T02:15:22Z
published: 2026-10-28T02:15:22Z
canonical: "docs.vastdata.com/dev-catalog-guides"
---

> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.vastdata.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Guides

Step-by-step queries for the questions the Catalog and the audit log answer. Start with Find files; use Capacity reports, Snapshots and change detection, and Tags and metadata for the Catalog, and Query the audit log for operations.

- **[Find files](/develop/docs/dev-catalog-guides-find-files)**: Find files by path, type, age, size, owner and extension, with filters pushed down to the cluster instead of walking directories.
- **[Capacity reports](/develop/docs/dev-catalog-guides-capacity-reports)**: Report capacity by owner, file extension and directory from the Catalog with the Python SDK, and process large subtrees in record batches.
- **[Snapshots and change detection](/develop/docs/dev-catalog-guides-snapshots-and-change-detection)**: List and read Catalog snapshots, and compare two of them to find files deleted, added or moved between them.
- **[Tags and metadata](/develop/docs/dev-catalog-guides-tags-and-metadata)**: Find objects by S3 tags and user metadata with the user_tags and user_metadata columns or with user-defined Catalog columns.
- **[Query the audit log](/develop/docs/dev-catalog-guides-audit-log)**: Use the Python SDK to see recent operations, who accessed a bucket and which requests failed, from the audit log table.