A zero-dependency, ultra-lightweight database time machine for SQLite

thunderbong 34 points 4 comments August 09, 2026
github.com · View on Hacker News

Discussion Highlights (2 comments)

simonw

https://github.com/nsrht/time-travel-sqlite-debugger/blob/ma... works by checking the mtime on the database file (and -wal file) once per second and creating a backups/unixtime_database.sqlite file if anything has changed, then keeps the last 50 copies. So OK for smaller database files but not great if you're pushing into a GB+ of data. I'm not convinced by the way it copies the files - I think using a "vacuum into" backup would be safer then file copies. Litestream offers point-in-time recovery for SQLite by backing up chunks of WAL directly, which I expect is a lot more efficient than this mechanism.

corysama

I can imagine abusing this to implement undo-redo for a game editor. Take snapshots. Record actions. Implement undo as: role back to a snapshot and re-run actions from the snapshot to the desired state.

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