Salesforce Schema Verification

Schema Verification

When to Use

• After deploying custom objects/fields and BEFORE deploying Apex, Flows, or LWCs
• After a sandbox refresh to verify all metadata survived
• When deploys succeed but Apex/Flows fail with "field not found" errors
• When you suspect schema cache corruption

Why This Matters

Salesforce deployments can report success while silently skipping fields. Bulk deploys of the entire force-app directory have been observed to skip 30+ custom fields without any error. If you then deploy Apex or Flows that reference those fields, they'll fail — and you won't know WHY because the object deploy said "success."

Quick Check: Do My Objects Exist?

# Run anonymous Apex to list all custom objects visible to runtime
sf apex run --target-org  -f /dev/stdin  gd = Schema.getGlobalDescribe();
List customs = new List();
for (String s : gd.keySet()) {
    if (s.contains('__c')) customs.add(s);
}
customs.sort();
for (String s : customs) System.debug(s);
APEX

Compare this output against your source objects:

# List all custom objects in source
ls force-app/main/default/objects/ | grep '__c'

Any object in source but NOT in the Apex output is invisible to runtime despite potentially showing as "deployed."

Detailed Check: Do All Fields Exist?

# For a specific object, list all fields visible to runtime
sf apex run --target-org  -f /dev/stdin  fields = desc.fields.getMap();
List fieldNames = new List(fields.keySet());
fieldNames.sort();
for (String f : fieldNames) System.debug(f);
APEX

Compare against source fields:

# List all fields defined in source for an object
ls force-app/main/default/objects/YOUR_OBJECT__c/fields/ | sed 's/.field-meta.xml//'

Automated Verification Script

Run this after deploying objects to verify ALL custom fields across ALL custom objects:

sf apex run --target-org  -f /dev/stdin  gd = Schema.getGlobalDescribe();
for (String objName : gd.keySet()) {
    if (!objName.contains('__c')) continue;
    Schema.DescribeSObjectResult desc = gd.get(objName).getDescribe();
    Map fields = desc.fields.getMap();
    System.debug('OBJECT: ' + objName + ' | FIELDS: ' + fields.size());
    for (String f : fields.keySet()) {
        if (f.contains('__c')) System.debug('  FIELD: ' + f);
    }
}
APEX

When Objects Are Missing from Runtime (Schema Cache Corruption)

If objects deploy successfully but are invisible to Schema.getGlobalDescribe():

1. Confirm via Tooling API that the objects actually exist:

sf data query --query "SELECT DurableId, DeveloperName, NamespacePrefix FROM CustomObject WHERE DeveloperName='Your_Object'" --target-org  --tooling-api --json

1. If Tooling API shows them but runtime doesn't — this is schema cache corruption
2. See the salesforce-deploy skill's "Schema Cache Corruption on Hyperforce" section for workarounds

Post-Refresh Verification Checklist

After a sandbox refresh, run these in order:

1. Check custom objects exist:

sf apex run --target-org  -f /dev/stdin  gd = Schema.getGlobalDescribe();
for (String obj : expected) {
    System.debug(obj + ': ' + (gd.containsKey(obj.toLowerCase()) ? 'EXISTS' : 'MISSING'));
}
APEX

1. Check field counts match source:

# Count fields in source
for dir in force-app/main/default/objects/*__c/fields; do
    obj=$(basename $(dirname "$dir"))
    count=$(ls "$dir" 2>/dev/null | wc -l | tr -d ' ')
    echo "$obj: $count fields in source"
done

1. Compare against org field counts (from the automated verification above)

1. Deploy missing fields explicitly if any gaps found:

# Deploy fields for a specific object
sf project deploy start --source-dir force-app/main/default/objects/Case/fields/ --target-org 

1. Re-verify after deploying missing fields

Common Issues

| Issue | Cause | Fix | |-------|-------|-----| | Object in Tooling API but not in runtime | Schema cache corruption | Enable/disable Einstein or file support case | | Field count mismatch | Bulk deploy silently skipped fields | Deploy fields explicitly per-object | | Field exists but SOQL fails | Field-level security not granted | Check profile/permission set FLS | | "Invalid field" in Apex after deploy | Deploy succeeded but field invisible | Run schema verification, redeploy fields individually |

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: jhillock1
• Source: jhillock1/salesforce-claude-skills
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.