alchemy-utils 0.1a0
- ID
- 14033
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 13 Aug 2026, 3:51 AM
- Fetched
- 14 Aug 2026, 6:58 AM
- Provider
- Simon Willison
- Category
- developer-ai
- Original URL
- https://simonwillison.net/2026/Aug/12/alchemy-utils/
- Source URL
- https://simonwillison.net/atom/everything/
Summary
- Score
- 8.0
- Created
- 14 Aug 2026, 6:58 AM
- Tags
- Audience
- developersvibe_codersdatabase_learnersai_agent_users
What happened
Simon Willison released alchemy-utils 0.1a0, a cross-database version of his sqlite-utils library built on SQLAlchemy that supports PostgreSQL, SQLite, and DuckDB. He generated the prototype using Codex and GPT-5.6 Sol Ultra with red/green TDD, taking very few follow-up prompts to reach an alpha release. He also used Codex to optimize a CSV-to-DuckDB insertion task from nearly an hour down to 35 seconds.
Why it matters
It provides a concrete blueprint for using AI coding agents to build and optimize real, test-driven open-source projects from scratch using uv, pytest, and iterative prompting. You can also use the resulting CLI to quickly inspect or populate PostgreSQL, SQLite, and DuckDB databases via one-liners.
Discussion angle
How to structure prompts for AI agents to build entire libraries using TDD and iterative optimization, as demonstrated by the red/green pytest workflow used here.