Multiple projects are coming to the same point it seems. Motherduck has been marketing "dives" since the beginning of the year (https://motherduck.com/blog/duck-dive-and-answer/) and in the Louie.ai team, we have been iterating on different patterns for similar needs. I'm getting the feeling that the answer to SaaS apps as fixed UIs over databases being dead because of coding agents means just the fixed dashboard pattern is dead, not SaaS, and BYO UI is part of the new table stakes.
I'm curious where the pattern will go. My sense is there is a split between cathedrals vs bazaar for approach here, where cathedrals are quite rigid app builders, think framer/wix, while bazaars focus a layer below for more flexibility but less integrated.
fsuts 3 hours ago [-]
To save anyone else wondering what is Datasette a search:
“Datasette is a tool for exploring and publishing data. It helps people take data of any shape, analyze and explore it, and publish it as an interactive website and accompanying API.
Datasette is aimed at data journalists, museum curators, archivists, local governments, scientists, researchers and anyone else who has data that they wish to share with the world. It is part of a wider ecosystem of 44 tools and 154 plugins dedicated to making working with structured data as productive as possible.”
tuo-lei 15 minutes ago [-]
nice pattern with the stored queries for writes. but who defines them? if the app author can create their own stored queries, the write restriction is basically honor system.
anitil 13 hours ago [-]
When I've needed something like this in the past I've spun up simple HTML pages and used the json endpoint that all datasette instances come with [0]. I like this new pattern much better, as it keeps your app and data in one place (I remember having some issue with this at the time, though I can't remember what the actual issue was)
So I imagine we could now load some data in to sqlite, design some HTML also loaded in to the db, and deploy. Although looking at the source, it seems like stored apps are expected to be managed by the plugin itself, but I'm sure there's a way around that
I'm going to think about how Datasette Apps can work with the apps themselves stored on a filesystem so they can be revision controlled using Git.
I have an idea for a way to edit them through Datasette and have them backed up to Git via a separate mechanism, but having them on disk would be a whole lot more convenient.
Interesting idea, I know there's the fsdir [0] table-valued function / module that allows loading from disk, so it should be possible to modify that or hard-code base list of paths or something
> it keeps your app and data in one place (I remember having some issue with this at the time, though I can't remember what the actual issue was)
CORS headers?
Talpur1 4 hours ago [-]
This seems to attractive side of seeing it, however the striping Json would not be suitable i believe
Talpur1 4 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
euroderf 9 hours ago [-]
I never understood why someone hasn't made a framework that makes it stupidly easy to fill an HTML page with SQLite database tables, with all the usual display controls, and with as much "liveness" as desired, and with a protocol (over HTTPS) to manage comms to a server-side instance. SQLite is robust, lightweight, bulletproof - a WASM build belongs on ALL the webpages !
joren- 9 hours ago [-]
As mentioned below I have been building the 'read' side of this: a data publication platform. I wanted to avoid any server side components. The communication / write part and updating the server-side sqlite database would need running components on the server which I wanted to avoid.
The 'write' part would technically be very doable and not that different from other back-ends.
Imagine if this were built into browsers and you only had to serve a SQLite file.
iLoveOncall 6 hours ago [-]
Because it's pretty much worthless.
You almost never need just a basic list of all the data in your table, even if you're able to filter and sort it. There's no moat there at all. People need serious BI tools, and that throws simplicity out of the window (PowerBI, QuickSight, etc.).
mpeg 14 minutes ago [-]
I disagree, a lot of the time people buy "serious BI tools" precisely because they think they need all that power and complexity.
In reality, what most people need is much simpler, a mini app with some curated datasets and simple filters, maybe some AI querying if we want to get fancy. There's some companies out there that work with big data, but for the rest of us small data is ok.
2 hours ago [-]
pietz 3 hours ago [-]
Hey Simon,
although I'm coming from a different starting point, it seems like some of our thoughts have aligned. I'm building https://caipi.ai/ as a workspace for agents to build simple data driven apps. The agent edits through MCP and the user gets an interactive app in the browser.
If you're interested picking each others brains around this topic, I'd be psyched to have a chat. gh:pietz.
jacobgold 13 hours ago [-]
It is pretty cool that we have browser features like this to rely on.
I remember writing code in the bad old days to parse HTML tags and allowlist specific attributes. Now browsers have a much better solution baked in.
But it still makes me a bit nervous. Seems like a very small bug could sneak in. This is a good example of where I would reach for Fable to double check the implementation and have a lot of extra tests.
(nit: would be nice if the chat box treated Enter and Shift+Enter the way these other companies have trained my brain, but maybe that is a deliberate choice.)
simonw 11 hours ago [-]
In the three short days we had access to Fable I did have it run a review, and it spotted an issue for me to fix.
Thankfully GPT-5.5 is really strong on security stuff too. I wouldn't have dared build this without a whole lot of Opus/GPT-assisted prototyping and testing along the way.
joren- 9 hours ago [-]
Looks like a good addition to the datasette ecosystem. I have been working on a similar idea with cusom html around sqlite databases. By default a faceted search interface is generated but by reusing the client side data layer, custom apps are made easy.
The design keeps data and presentation together and even maps do not rely on external services.
I just went through the github project repository.
It has 119 repositories.
Is this how AI slop looks like in code? Made for the agents, by the agents?
Is this separation of concerns or context management with agents as a first class residents and humans merely acting as custodians?
I'm at 205 today (some of the repos on GitHub aren't plugins, and some in the datasette org were written and released by Alex Garcia which excludes them from my own releases database).
Most of the plugins I wrote this year have been heavily AI-assisted, but that wasn't the case for the older ones. Here's my post from October 2025 when I first realized Claude Sonnet 4.5 could one-shot a plugin for me: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Oct/8/claude-datasette-plugin...
The reason there are so many repos is that Datasette uses a plugin architecture, which makes it much easier to try out different features without risk of corrupting the core project with things that turn out to be bad ideas.
This guy is head slopper of the current moment, for sure.
THen Garry Tan.
sumitkumar 7 hours ago [-]
Our leader is Boris Cherny.
Simon needs to resist the pelicans(and the django mindset) and Garry needs a new loop which can loop on itself without any human trigger so that the agents can "dream" better. Who knew that it was not just the models which could hallucinate.
nryoo 12 hours ago [-]
[dead]
Littice 13 hours ago [-]
[dead]
xgulfie 14 hours ago [-]
Why people feel the need to overload terms like "datasette" I'll never know
tadfisher 13 hours ago [-]
I think the current meaning has quite successfully replaced the original usage. Unless you typed this on a Commodore VIC-20, I suppose.
voidUpdate 4 hours ago [-]
For you maybe, but I've never heard of this site, my only reference for "datasette" is the commodore 1560
alnwlsn 1 hours ago [-]
Me too, and also I've never used one and it was discontinued before I was born
simonw 11 hours ago [-]
I learned to program on a C64 and one of the first programs I wrote myself was an incredible basic "database" (really just a program that could store and then return simple fielded data.)
I named my database management software Datasette as an homage to the C64. I also figured it would be a unique name that would be easy to search for...
... jokes on me, it turns out the retro computing C64 community is way more active than I expected and there are still plenty of people taking about Datasette tape drives online, 30+ years after they stopped being manufactured and sold.
DANmode 13 hours ago [-]
I can’t even parse what you’re complaining about. Could you elaborate?
jayknight 12 hours ago [-]
I'm assuming he's talking about the old hardware data cassette vs the software project of the save name?
I’m assuming they’re just taking about the word dataset.
Either way feels ridiculous, but the human in me wants to know which it is ^_^
da_grift_shift 10 hours ago [-]
10 PRINT "HAVE YOU TRIED READING IT AGAIN?"
20 GOTO "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48594798"
hankbond 13 hours ago [-]
Wow this is very similar to the direction im taking with my new project https://github.com/hank-bond/uix (warning the code base is certainly not messy but the application is barely usable for anything as of this post).
Here the goal is to be a self-assembling harness (akin to pi) but focusing on duplex human-agent interactivity over rendered HTML "apps". To start, it's focused more on the "please review this PR and then generate a one-page report" with the ability to write comments in the actual report that automatically get sent back to the agent. The end goal is closer to offering a substrate for less technical people to be able to build personal applications like
- an interactive wiki maintainer: chat with the agent about an article, pull out sections, append/create concepts in the wiki with the new info
- agent code harness: agent tabs to the left, chat in middle, code diffs on the right (like the superset/commander class of apps)
Anyway, I'm really into the "self assembling" class of software where everything is basically just an SDK + Agent. I think we might actually be ushering in a new era of "personal computing" in that it's less friction than ever to personalize your setup to your whims. Anyway, thats the goal I'm reaching for.
It seems many others are coalescing on this idea at the same time, so it must just be in the aether.
ai_fry_ur_brain 12 hours ago [-]
People that overuse LLMs I notice all build the same things and have the same ideas. Its one of the many reasons I avoid them, it kinda leads people into this average group where creativity is dead and there's a kinda hive mind controlling them.
Ive witnessed it many times now, im positive this phenomenon exists.
pietz 3 hours ago [-]
Or, your know, people who are exploring the limit of current tools come across the lack of certain solutions and start building them.
hankbond 3 hours ago [-]
People also build the same things if they have the same needs. That doesn't mean creativity is dead. My life as a software engineer is not that unique of others. This isn't really something to lament. There's nothing wrong with exploring similar ideas.
Rendered at 15:03:48 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
I'm curious where the pattern will go. My sense is there is a split between cathedrals vs bazaar for approach here, where cathedrals are quite rigid app builders, think framer/wix, while bazaars focus a layer below for more flexibility but less integrated.
“Datasette is a tool for exploring and publishing data. It helps people take data of any shape, analyze and explore it, and publish it as an interactive website and accompanying API.
Datasette is aimed at data journalists, museum curators, archivists, local governments, scientists, researchers and anyone else who has data that they wish to share with the world. It is part of a wider ecosystem of 44 tools and 154 plugins dedicated to making working with structured data as productive as possible.”
So I imagine we could now load some data in to sqlite, design some HTML also loaded in to the db, and deploy. Although looking at the source, it seems like stored apps are expected to be managed by the plugin itself, but I'm sure there's a way around that
[0] Eg from one of the examples - https://datasette.io/legislators/-/query.json?sql=select+*+f... . If you strip the '.json' you get the html view. For what it's worth there's also a '.csv' version.
I have an idea for a way to edit them through Datasette and have them backed up to Git via a separate mechanism, but having them on disk would be a whole lot more convenient.
Filed an issue here: https://github.com/datasette/datasette-apps/issues/30
https://railsware.com/blog/couchdb-and-couchapp-part-1/amp/#...
https://couchapp.readthedocs.io/en/latest/couchapp/gettingst...
https://couchapp.readthedocs.io/en/latest/user/list-of-couch...
[0] https://sqlite.org/src/file/ext/misc/fileio.c, it allows you to read a directory recursively in the cli (`select * from fsdir("./");`)
Edit: It allows upwards traversals (`select * from fsdir("../../../../etc/passwd");`), so beware
I'm sticking with the Python bundled sqlite3 though so I'm not in a good place to take advantage of that one.
[0] https://github.com/coleifer/sqlite-vtfunc
CORS headers?
The 'write' part would technically be very doable and not that different from other back-ends.
https://github.com/GhentCDH/Pihka
https://syntax.fm/show/924/sync-engines-and-local-data
You almost never need just a basic list of all the data in your table, even if you're able to filter and sort it. There's no moat there at all. People need serious BI tools, and that throws simplicity out of the window (PowerBI, QuickSight, etc.).
In reality, what most people need is much simpler, a mini app with some curated datasets and simple filters, maybe some AI querying if we want to get fancy. There's some companies out there that work with big data, but for the rest of us small data is ok.
although I'm coming from a different starting point, it seems like some of our thoughts have aligned. I'm building https://caipi.ai/ as a workspace for agents to build simple data driven apps. The agent edits through MCP and the user gets an interactive app in the browser.
If you're interested picking each others brains around this topic, I'd be psyched to have a chat. gh:pietz.
I remember writing code in the bad old days to parse HTML tags and allowlist specific attributes. Now browsers have a much better solution baked in.
But it still makes me a bit nervous. Seems like a very small bug could sneak in. This is a good example of where I would reach for Fable to double check the implementation and have a lot of extra tests.
(nit: would be nice if the chat box treated Enter and Shift+Enter the way these other companies have trained my brain, but maybe that is a deliberate choice.)
Thankfully GPT-5.5 is really strong on security stuff too. I wouldn't have dared build this without a whole lot of Opus/GPT-assisted prototyping and testing along the way.
The design keeps data and presentation together and even maps do not rely on external services.
I have called it Pihka: https://ghentcdh.github.io/Pihka/ https://github.com/GhentCDH/Pihka
It has 119 repositories.
Is this how AI slop looks like in code? Made for the agents, by the agents? Is this separation of concerns or context management with agents as a first class residents and humans merely acting as custodians?
Most of them predate coding agents. I started the Datasette project in 2017.
In fact we can answer this with Datasette! Here's a query showing the 111 packages with at least one release prior to ChatGPT on Nov 30 2022: https://datasette.simonwillison.net/simonwillisonblog?sql=wi...
And this is that same query for Claude Code (Feb 24 2025) - which returns 172:
https://datasette.simonwillison.net/simonwillisonblog?sql=wi...
I'm at 205 today (some of the repos on GitHub aren't plugins, and some in the datasette org were written and released by Alex Garcia which excludes them from my own releases database).
Most of the plugins I wrote this year have been heavily AI-assisted, but that wasn't the case for the older ones. Here's my post from October 2025 when I first realized Claude Sonnet 4.5 could one-shot a plugin for me: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Oct/8/claude-datasette-plugin...
The reason there are so many repos is that Datasette uses a plugin architecture, which makes it much easier to try out different features without risk of corrupting the core project with things that turn out to be bad ideas.
I gave a talk about plugin architecture at DjangoCon a couple of years ago: https://2024.djangocon.us/talks/how-to-design-and-implement-...
THen Garry Tan.
Simon needs to resist the pelicans(and the django mindset) and Garry needs a new loop which can loop on itself without any human trigger so that the agents can "dream" better. Who knew that it was not just the models which could hallucinate.
I named my database management software Datasette as an homage to the C64. I also figured it would be a unique name that would be easy to search for...
... jokes on me, it turns out the retro computing C64 community is way more active than I expected and there are still plenty of people taking about Datasette tape drives online, 30+ years after they stopped being manufactured and sold.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_Datasette vs
https://datasette.io/
https://datassette.bandcamp.com/
https://musicforprogramming.net/
Either way feels ridiculous, but the human in me wants to know which it is ^_^
Here the goal is to be a self-assembling harness (akin to pi) but focusing on duplex human-agent interactivity over rendered HTML "apps". To start, it's focused more on the "please review this PR and then generate a one-page report" with the ability to write comments in the actual report that automatically get sent back to the agent. The end goal is closer to offering a substrate for less technical people to be able to build personal applications like
- an interactive wiki maintainer: chat with the agent about an article, pull out sections, append/create concepts in the wiki with the new info - agent code harness: agent tabs to the left, chat in middle, code diffs on the right (like the superset/commander class of apps)
Anyway, I'm really into the "self assembling" class of software where everything is basically just an SDK + Agent. I think we might actually be ushering in a new era of "personal computing" in that it's less friction than ever to personalize your setup to your whims. Anyway, thats the goal I'm reaching for.
It seems many others are coalescing on this idea at the same time, so it must just be in the aether.
Ive witnessed it many times now, im positive this phenomenon exists.