as a graphcool user, do we have direct access to the Aurora db so we can run SQL queries as needed?

you do have direct access when you run a private cluster, but not on the shared cluster

So if I want to do something simple like emptying all nodes from a single table, can I do that on shared?

through the Simple API yes, but not directly via the DB

ok, and there's no feature in the console ui that provides that currently, is there?

no but here's a script that might be helpful https://github.com/graphcool-examples/scripts/tree/master/delete-nodes

ok, thanks