Why I built a SQLite workbench in bash

You SSH into a server. The SQLite database is right there — you can see it in the filesystem. Every GUI tool you own stops working. TablePlus, DB Browser, Beekeeper — all of them need a local connection. sqlite3 is available, but it's raw SQL with no browsing. litecli is read-biased and still needs installing. You need to look at some rows, update a field, check an index. You end up writing SELECT statements into a CLI, copying output into a notes file, writing UPDATE statements by hand. There's a better way. The build ShellQL is built on shellframe — a TUI framework I wrote in bash. shellframe handles screen management, keyboard routing, dirty-region rendering, and component lifecycle. Writing a new application on top of it is closer to writing a React app than writing a bash script. The surprising parts: Mouse support in bash is real, and it's not that hard once you understand xterm escape sequences SQLite's .schema output is parseable enough to build a schema browser without any ext