# How does Subgrounds work?

{% hint style="info" %}
Are you a data scientist or engineer? Check out [The Tutorials](/playgrounds-docs/subgrounds/tutorials.md) for technical explanations, tutorials and workshops for using Subgrounds.
{% endhint %}

You now understand what Subgrounds is and why it useful, but how does it work from a non-technical perspective?

Subgrounds exists in this broader ecosystem that The Graph powers. Lets dive into the process and travel along the path that data can take from chain to dashboard:

1. A network or chain produces data *continuously* in the form of blocks. This is the rawest form of data and consists of a series of blocks containing transactions and other metadata. This is often explored through a blockchain explorer, such as [Etherscan](https://etherscan.io).
2. [The Graph](https://thegraph.com/en/) indexes this data through their system of subgraph nodes and graph indexers.
3. Subgrounds ingests this indexed data and pipes it directly into your Python environment, providing recognizable objects representing the data.
4. We can now apply our familiar Python data stack to transform the data (using `pandas`), and visualize the data (using `matplotlib` or `plotly`).

**Playgrounds Maestro** *extends* this process further providing further reach to non-developer analysts and more. Here is a sneak peak of our Maestro platform (coming soon):

1. Maestro will direct the data ingested by Subgrounds into your favorite data warehouse. 
2. Now, you can use your own warehoused data to empower the familiar BI tooling including Google Sheets, Power BI, Retool, etc.


---

# Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation

If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question.

Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter:

```
GET https://playgrounds-analytics.gitbook.io/playgrounds-docs/subgrounds/the-basics/how-does-subgrounds-work.md?ask=<question>
```

The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language.
The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation.

Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.