The disclosed embodiments provide a system for processing data. During operation, the system obtains feature configurations for a set of features and a command for inspecting a data set that is produced using the feature configurations. Next, the system obtains, from the feature configurations, one or more anchors containing metadata for accessing the set of features in an environment and a join configuration for joining a feature with one or more additional features. The system then uses the anchors to retrieve feature values of the features and zips the feature values according to the join configuration without matching entity keys associated with the feature values. Finally, the system outputs the zipped feature values in response to the command.