Commercial Support

Sluice is open source and free under the Elastic Licence 2.0. It is built and maintained by Caracal Lynx Limited (Scottish company SC826823) — an IT and data consultancy specialising in data migrations and data quality for organisations adopting AI tools.

The CLI engine, the built-in adapters (MSSQL, PostgreSQL, CSV, XLSX, REST, generic CSV target, generic PostgreSQL target), the DQ engine, the transform engine, the merge engine, and the plugin system are all in the open-source core. There are no feature gates and no licence checks — anything you find in this documentation works in the open core unless it’s explicitly tagged as a paid add-on.

What Caracal Lynx sells, separately, is the layer of specialist knowledge that turns the engine into a delivered migration. We maintain a small set of premium add-ons and offer hands-on services on top.

Paid services

AI Data Readiness Audit

For organisations adopting Microsoft Copilot, Power BI, or any LLM-based tooling. Caracal Lynx connects Sluice to your data sources, builds the data quality ruleset, runs it, and delivers a clear report on what’s AI-ready and what needs fixing first. Most reports take under a fortnight.

AI tools amplify your data quality — for better or worse. Sluice tells you which, before your AI tools do.

Enrich Service

The @caracal-lynx/sluice-enrich private package adds an Enrich phase between Extract and DQ. It runs async API lookups in parallel — EU VAT validation via VIES, UK VAT via HMRC, UK Trade Tariff lookups — and writes the enriched columns straight back into staging so downstream DQ rules can validate against them. Designed for batch-friendly third-party APIs with rate limits and caching baked in.

Application Adapters

Pre-built target adapters for ERP systems we’ve spent years implementing:

@caracal-lynx/sluice-adapter-ifs — IFS ERP via CSV import
@caracal-lynx/sluice-adapter-bc — Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central via OData REST + OAuth 2.0 client credentials
@caracal-lynx/sluice-adapter-bluecherry — BlueCherry (CGS) via fixed-format CSV import per entity

Configured the same way as built-in adapters; drop in the npm dependency and they self-register.

Domain Rule Packages

Reusable DQ rule packs for domains where the rules are non-obvious or burdensome to maintain:

@caracal-lynx/etl-rules-uk — UK postcode validation, UK VAT format, UK CRN format, UK bank sort-code/account-number rules.
@caracal-lynx/etl-rules-fashion — fashion and retail data standards (size grids, colour codes, season-code patterns).

Sluice MCP Server

@caracal-lynx/sluice-mcp — a private Model Context Protocol server that turns Claude (or Claude Code) into an active participant in a migration engagement rather than a passive advisor. Sixteen tools spanning pipeline execution, schema inspection, config authoring, and scaffolding. Provided to clients as part of a paid Sluice-assisted migration.

Without the MCP server: Claude generates YAML → human runs it → human pastes results back → Claude advises. With the MCP server: Claude generates YAML → executes it → inspects results → self-corrects. Human approval only required before live runs.

Migration Delivery

Full end-to-end data migrations delivered by Caracal Lynx. We bring the engine, the adapters, the rule packages, and the engineering hours. Typical engagements range from single-entity refreshes to full ERP go-live programmes.

Custom Plugin Development

Bespoke rules, adapters, transforms, and merge strategies for source systems unique to your business. Delivered as a private npm package or a TypeScript file plugin checked into your client repo.

Get in touch

Email sluice@caracallynx.com with a one-paragraph summary of your migration and we’ll come back to you within two working days. There is no hard sell — we’ll tell you whether Sluice is the right fit for your scenario, and if it isn’t, we’ll point you at someone better placed.

For broader Caracal Lynx engagements, caracallynx.com is the company site.