2.2k stars · Apache-2.0 · 4.2.1 (2026-08-13) · Track this in Scout
Pours JSON and CSV into a real SQLite database with no schema design, then indexes it and adds full-text search.
▶Repo detailsthe review · specs · pros & cons
What it is
A command-line tool and Python library that turns JSON and CSV into a real SQLite database without you designing a schema, then lets you query it, index it and add full-text search. It is the plumbing between "I have a folder of files" and "I have a question".
What it is good for. Right now the output of yt-dlp, youtube-transcript-api, youtube-comment-downloader and PRAW is four incompatible piles of JSON, and the questions worth asking cut across all of them: which complaint appears under five different competitors' videos, which phrases show up in both Reddit threads and YouTube comments, what titles the fastest-growing channel in a niche used this quarter. One command per file and all of that is one research.db you can query in SQL, search full-text, and — the part that matters most — hand to Claude Code as a database it can query, instead of forty attachments it has to read. It is ten minutes of work that upgrades three previous editions.
- No schema design. It reads the JSON and creates the columns, which is exactly right for messy scraped data.
- Built-in full-text search (
enable-fts) means "every comment containing 'confusing'" is one query. - SQLite is one file: back it up with entry 11, copy it to another machine, open it anywhere. There is no server to run and nothing to break.
- You will be writing SQL, or asking Claude Code to. Not hard, but it is a real skill boundary and the tool does nothing until you cross it.
- Verification trap: the GitHub releases page stops at 3.39 (November 2025) and looks stale. PyPI shows 4.2.1 on 13 August 2026. Always check PyPI for this project — and note that 3.x → 4.x is a major version, so read the changelog before upgrading an existing database.
- SQLite is not the right home for a production application; where PostgreSQL is already running, keep this on the research side of the fence.
Its sibling Datasette will serve the same file as a browsable web UI if you ever want to click instead of type, and entry 06 will chart it.
Standalone on your Mac, alongside the scrapers, which for yt-dlp and the comment downloader is where they have to run anyway.
