2026-06-23

Simon Willison — 2026-06-23#

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The standout news today is a massive step forward for Datasette’s mutation capabilities in the 1.0a35 release, introducing powerful new graphical interfaces for creating and altering tables. This shifts Datasette further from its read-only roots toward a full-fledged database management UI.

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datasette 1.0a35 Simon dropped a major pre-release for Datasette that introduces powerful new “Create table” and “Alter table” graphical interfaces, complete with their own backing JSON APIs. Users can now seamlessly define columns, NOT NULL constraints, and foreign keys, or modify existing tables by adding, dropping, or reordering columns directly from the UI. Additionally, the release formalizes the template context variables, generated directly from dataclass definitions, into a stable API for custom template authors to use until Datasette 2.0. Simon also shared a quick video demo walking through the new table mutation features.

2026-07-06

Blogs, AI, Tech

Sqlite, Generative Ai, Large Language Models, Developer Tools

Simon Willison — 2026-07-06#

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The latest release candidate for sqlite-utils is notable not just for its subtle breaking changes like compound foreign key support, but because Simon highlights his use of cutting-edge AI assistants like Claude Fable 5 and GPT-5.5 to aggressively churn through his issue backlog.

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sqlite-utils 4.0rc3 · Source Simon pushed out a third release candidate for sqlite-utils 4.0, delaying the stable release after using Claude Fable 5 and GPT-5.5 to clear out a large backlog of pull requests and issues. The most critical update is new support for introspecting and creating compound foreign keys, which requires a subtle breaking change to the table.foreign_keys Python API. Additionally, the tool now properly follows SQLite’s convention for case-insensitive column names, an update that affected numerous parts of the codebase.