Supabase engineer here. This was a lot of fun to build with the Electric team. There were a lot of technical hurdles to jump over - I’m happy to cover any questions.
We’ll continue shipping throughout the week. I see a lot of feedback in this thread already which we’ll get started with.
Postgres.new: In-browser Postgres with an AI interface
31–40 of 116 posts
Re: Postgres.new: In-browser Postgres with an AI interface
#32I really do think that software engineering as we know it is ending. It will take 3-5 years for tools like this to mature. But it will happen, and hard fought skill sets like SQL database design, query design, and maybe even ORMs will become obsolete. My biggest prediction is that ORMs will not be necessary when LLMs can generate SQL. Low level SQL is a better abstraction for LLMs than ORMs, and as people are removed…
How does that make any of the skills obsolete? If anything, it makes them even more important.
In the 20th century you got away with knowing the syntax and hacking away. Now you really need to have a deep understanding of relational algebra, since the LLM is doing the typing for you.
Re: Postgres.new: In-browser Postgres with an AI interface
#33> Please connect from a laptop or desktop to use postgres.new. There's nothing wrong using Webkit / Safari on your laptop or desktop. There are dozens of us, DOZENS!
It's working fine from Safari for me
Re: Postgres.new: In-browser Postgres with an AI interface
#34> Please connect from a laptop or desktop to use postgres.new. There's nothing wrong using Webkit / Safari on your laptop or desktop. There are dozens of us, DOZENS!
fwiw this will show for 2 reasons: 1/ you're using a small window (even on Chrome/FF). We don't support mobile yet, so if you're seeing this on a desktop just expand the window 2/ you're on safari, which doesn't have support for OPFS yet: https://github.com/electric-sql/pglite/pull/130
The website works fine for me on Safari. Had it generate a 3-table schema no issues.
Re: Postgres.new: In-browser Postgres with an AI interface
#35Basic question. Is there a service out there where I can easily link my database to an LLM to do this exact same type of analysis, except on one of my own Postgres DBs instead of one backed by PGlite? My org has several non-technical people who would greatly benefit from being able to interact with our DB via an LLM, rather than SQL 101 queries. The PostgreSQL Explorer extension on VS Code helps some, but doesn't qui…
I'm in the middle of building something like this but it's not ready yet.
You'll just provide an openAI/anthropic api key and connection details to the db/schema. I intend for it to work a lot like postgres.new but with regular postgres instances.
Re: Postgres.new: In-browser Postgres with an AI interface
#36what kind of data load are we talking here? I know it gets stored locally. So, is it limited by my local disk size? How will it perform if I have 1TB of data?
1TB might be a struggle :) Yes, this is currently limit by both browser storage (IndexedDB) and memory. The reason it is also memory bound is because Emscripten's IndexedDB VFS is actually implemented as an in-memory VFS which syncs files to IndexedDB every once in awhile (due to an async limitation).
PGlite is working on an OPFS backend, which will likely increase the max data size quite a bit.
Re: Postgres.new: In-browser Postgres with an AI interface
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
LLMs don't have the context to make good decisions though. You need all of that hard fought skills to make those decisions. And people are the only ones that can have the context enough to actually make decisions. Not only that, but AI is way more expensive than we think. We're currently in a hype bubble funded by last ditch effort VC money. When that money runs out, and it will eventually, AI is going to get WAY mor…
I personally think LLMs make much better decisions than me. I often have a design in mind and then when I prompt Claude it gives me a much better one, and also takes a lot of edge case into account that I didn't even think of. Maybe I'm a useless programmer but I'm sure I'm not the only one.
Even when I write working code, I prompt claude, and it adds a bunch of stuff I would never have added. It astonishes me how good it is
Re: Postgres.new: In-browser Postgres with an AI interface
#38I really do think that software engineering as we know it is ending. It will take 3-5 years for tools like this to mature. But it will happen, and hard fought skill sets like SQL database design, query design, and maybe even ORMs will become obsolete. My biggest prediction is that ORMs will not be necessary when LLMs can generate SQL. Low level SQL is a better abstraction for LLMs than ORMs, and as people are removed…
We already had SQL model and code generators well before LLMs. What does adding in random output do to improve that?
You havent been using these tools if you think this
Re: Postgres.new: In-browser Postgres with an AI interface
#39Basic question. Is there a service out there where I can easily link my database to an LLM to do this exact same type of analysis, except on one of my own Postgres DBs instead of one backed by PGlite? My org has several non-technical people who would greatly benefit from being able to interact with our DB via an LLM, rather than SQL 101 queries. The PostgreSQL Explorer extension on VS Code helps some, but doesn't qui…
Another possibility might be to export the database (or a subset of it) to be loaded in a more ephemeral environment like PGlite so that you don't have to worry about non technical users running inefficient/unindexed queries taking down the prod DB.
Re: Postgres.new: In-browser Postgres with an AI interface
#40This is so cool, "just because we could", but I am curious about possible use cases for Postgres in the browser?