sqlite-utils 4.0rc2, mostly written by Claude Fable (for about $149.25)

> I went out to enjoy the Half Moon Bay 4th of July parade, occasionally checking in and prompting the next step for Fable from my phone.

This intensification of work will not be good for workers’ health. Like, put your phone down man. You can’t be modeling this behavior to young people.

Further, the intensification of work is probably not even good for productivity in the long term. This periodic half-thinking about things without stepping away from the problems you are working to solve will lead to more half-assed solutions. Ideas need room to breathe and dedicated focus.

Great to see such write ups in particular with money.

At least 2 things the random LinkedIn post will ignore, on purpose or not :

- price today remains low (even though they might feel higher than before), Uber is the business model, no secret there, it's a VC classic

- $150 spent by an expert, a software engineer with significant practical knowledge in AI, is not equivalent to the exact same amount spent by a novice.

Yet now that a number is out, you bet it will be used. Expect alarmist posts tomorrow morning in your feed claiming building software is now as cheap as diner at the restaurant.

The problem I have with this workflow is that the models are still too eager to please. If I ask it to scan a release and note possible issues, it absolutely will find issues. If I keep running the same prompt, it will keep finding issues. I’ve spammed GitHub PR reviews and it just keep finding (or inventing?) new issues. There is never a “Nothing found, good to go!”. I have to keep reminding myself that the model will always give me what I ask for, regardless of the reality/truth.

I'm a big fan of sqlite-utils, but I really don't like how Python (particularly 3.12+) changes how sqlite's transactions work -- the native behavior explained in the sqlite docs is much better IMO. I understand why Python had to change it (to be compatible with other databases) but I don't think it's a good model for sqlite.

Therefore, I created apsw-utils, a port of sqlite-utils to the amazingly-awesome apsw lib -- which is a really idiomatic sqlite lib for python. It's here: https://answerdotai.github.io/apswutils/

I've used it in lots of projects including in significant production stuff, and it's always worked great for me. IMO if you're serious about doing sqlite in python, at some point you'll probably want to check out apsw.

I'm kind of surprised that there is no test case that would have identified the fact that delete_where() leaves the state corrupted. There would be no need to ask Fable if the problem gets identified by the test. And having a test will also catch all future problems that might arise in the same function. So maybe instead of asking Claude what is wrong it would be wiser to invest in test coverage.

The title cost is only if this was raw API usage, but it was included in a subscription, so it's a small subset of the $200 plan:

> I upgraded to the Claude Max $200/month plan (I was previously on $100/month) to increase my Fable allowance for the remaining time until the July 7th Fablepocalypse, when even Claude Max subscribers will have to pay full API cost for the model.

I really wonder if Anthropic will stick with their decision to keep Fable on extra usage credits until they "get more compute", especially in the light of GPT 5.6 very likely coming out next week (it's confirmed to have the exact same pricing as GPT 5.5)

just a note. in most parts of the world 149.25 USD can cover utilities, water, and food for a month for 1 adult person or even a family.

Did you check the cost calculation? I wouldn’t trust it to give the correct amount if i put the amount in the prompt

Glad to see others dual wielding: “I used to think that the idea of having one model review the work of another was somewhat absurd—it felt weirdly superstitious. The problem is it really does work”

Skynet wants to make us poorer.

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Fun fact: because AI written works don't have copyright (in the EU at least) and the level of prompting many people engage in doesn't suffice to create a copyrightable "work" and software licenses require you to actually be able to grant a license using rights you hold on a work, not only are many AI generated "works" not actually protected by copyright but by selling licenses you're actually in breach of contract law and may end up owing the licensee software you don't have.