So the main feature of this project is that it's easy to fork a database, however it's 1.2x to 4x slower than sqlite, and it's level of testing and validation will be nothing like sqlite.
The simple way to fork a sqlite db is just to copy it, but if that is too slow you could use it with a copy on write filesystem, either something native, a FUSE filesystem, or build a sqlite VFS.
That would probably be faster to build, faster to run, and easier to validate.
> The simple way to fork a sqlite db is just to copy it
SQLite recommends against doing that [1] while a transaction is active, because the copy might have some pre/post data in it which could potentially cause corruption. Presumably this isn't an issue with copy-on-write filesystems assuming they copy atomically, but I probably still wouldn't do it, instead use the backup API or VACUUM INTO (if nothing else, because VACUUM INTO will also obviously VACUUM the copy).
If you're not attached/writing to it, then of course it's fine.
No? Where are you getting those figures? It feels like you may have pulled that from the 125 and 400 us numbers?
> The simple way to fork a sqlite db is just to copy it, but if that is too slow you could use it with a copy on write filesystem, either something native, a FUSE filesystem, or build a sqlite VFS.
That wouldn’t really solve what dolt does though.
> and it's level of testing and validation will be nothing like sqlite.
They’re using the other dolt tests as well as the SQLite tests. Nothing will hit the level of real world testing SQLite does.
Dolt has been around for 7 years[0]. Doltlite, like most software nowadays, has been touched by LLMs, but dismissing this project as "vibe coded" seems harsh
> Gas Town is for “write-only code”, … If you adopt Gas Town, you will lose the speed benefit of multiple agents if you read the code it produces. The first time you stare at an 8,500 line Git diff and try and parse what happened, you’ve lost. Go back to a single Claude Code session. Gas Town isn’t for you.
So none of the code has even been read by the author, it’s purposely overly verbose. “Touched by LLMs” seems to downplay just how vibe coded this is. I won’t use this database for anything.
If going through a strongly designed process with quality gates is vibe coding, I guess so. I thought the term was reserved fir “claude, make this happen” style development and the term for the more professional approach was “agentic development”, though this seems to be another layer higher.
Grouping it all under “vibe coded” loses precision. Sure, it uses AI, but differently from other projects and with different implications.
Battle tested and tested to hell, maybe yes. But still horrible insecure architecture, with read-only access being able to write. And totally insecure full text search. https://github.com/rurban/hardsqlite
Look at dev process (i did), this think is "tested to hell" and "battle tested".
But the feedback loop was automated and accelerated. Instead of 1000 loops spread over 20 years, it had 1000 loops over a few months.
Calling it "vibe coded" just shows something about you, not the project. It is not production ready yet, but that is not for fast ai dev or for technical reasons. It needs independent reviews, independent verification, and reputation.
That's selling it short. You could deploy something to production in minutes. Battle tested implies it's been not only deployed, but heavily used in all kinds of scenarios, and in the case of sqlite, probably by millions of different apps.
But anyway I assume that random name green account above is just a pro-vibe coding bot.
Everything touching this ecosystem (Gas Town, Dolt, Beads) seems like the absolute nadir of vibecoded slop
This specific community has been a Schelling point for some of the worst engineering practices I've ever seen and a desire to abstract away all details of code to LLM personas like the "Refinery" and "Deacon"
Psyched to see this! I've been working on my own similar thing that sucks and I don't want to - I want to write a local first music app that syncs across all my devices. This might get me there!
If you want to take a version from a database, it's usually for backup. If you want different versions in your data, you put that IN the database. Manually merging different database versions does not sound too surprising.
A VCS is useful for code, because plaintext lacks a version feature. This problem does not exist for databases, because you design the structure yourself.
There are filesystems (ZFS and btrfs) with snapshots and this feature can be used to version-control things. They both do copy-on-write and this is pretty close to what content-addressable storage would give you in terms of compression.
I let agents do their things but I would not trust them with my data without extensive validation. A database efforts main product is not exotic data structures but validation.
One of the reasons SQLite was mostly stable over the years was it sand-boxed its closed developer environment, and clearly defined the project scope. While controversial, they did not have to deal with common accountability issues associated with screening anonymous malicious and or incompetent clown PR. =3
But post 2020 HN contains 70% AI related posts on the front page such that the moment it is revealed that something is connected to AI, the excitement seems to falter (understandably so).
The simple way to fork a sqlite db is just to copy it, but if that is too slow you could use it with a copy on write filesystem, either something native, a FUSE filesystem, or build a sqlite VFS.
That would probably be faster to build, faster to run, and easier to validate.
SQLite recommends against doing that [1] while a transaction is active, because the copy might have some pre/post data in it which could potentially cause corruption. Presumably this isn't an issue with copy-on-write filesystems assuming they copy atomically, but I probably still wouldn't do it, instead use the backup API or VACUUM INTO (if nothing else, because VACUUM INTO will also obviously VACUUM the copy).
If you're not attached/writing to it, then of course it's fine.
[1]: https://www.sqlite.org/howtocorrupt.html#_backup_or_restore_...
Here's an in-memory one I made (pretty useful for unit tests): https://github.com/ncruces/go-sqlite3/tree/main/vfs/mvcc
The problem DoltLite solves is merging, not forking.
No? Where are you getting those figures? It feels like you may have pulled that from the 125 and 400 us numbers?
> The simple way to fork a sqlite db is just to copy it, but if that is too slow you could use it with a copy on write filesystem, either something native, a FUSE filesystem, or build a sqlite VFS.
That wouldn’t really solve what dolt does though.
> and it's level of testing and validation will be nothing like sqlite.
They’re using the other dolt tests as well as the SQLite tests. Nothing will hit the level of real world testing SQLite does.
https://www.dolthub.com/blog/2026-06-08-how-fast-is-doltlite...
[0] - https://www.dolthub.com/blog/2019-10-14-dolt-a-simple-exampl...
But worse.
> Gas Town is for “write-only code”, … If you adopt Gas Town, you will lose the speed benefit of multiple agents if you read the code it produces. The first time you stare at an 8,500 line Git diff and try and parse what happened, you’ve lost. Go back to a single Claude Code session. Gas Town isn’t for you.
So none of the code has even been read by the author, it’s purposely overly verbose. “Touched by LLMs” seems to downplay just how vibe coded this is. I won’t use this database for anything.
From the article, at the end of the second paragraph:
> Could a team of agents pull it off? It only took about 2,000 pull requests but DoltLite going Beta proves a team of agents certainly could.
The first PR was merged March 17th.
"vibe coded" seems pretty fitting
Grouping it all under “vibe coded” loses precision. Sure, it uses AI, but differently from other projects and with different implications.
But the feedback loop was automated and accelerated. Instead of 1000 loops spread over 20 years, it had 1000 loops over a few months.
Calling it "vibe coded" just shows something about you, not the project. It is not production ready yet, but that is not for fast ai dev or for technical reasons. It needs independent reviews, independent verification, and reputation.
So when you say battle tested earlier, and then not production ready later - which one is it?
But anyway I assume that random name green account above is just a pro-vibe coding bot.
This specific community has been a Schelling point for some of the worst engineering practices I've ever seen and a desire to abstract away all details of code to LLM personas like the "Refinery" and "Deacon"
A VCS is useful for code, because plaintext lacks a version feature. This problem does not exist for databases, because you design the structure yourself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4Upf_B9RLQ