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Discussion Sentiment

50% Positive

Analyzed from 281 words in the discussion.

Trending Topics

#pgbot#database#agents#postgresql#read#tool#directly#source#understand#built

Discussion (9 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

znnajdlaabout 4 hours ago
I don't understand what this tool offers over simply querying pg directly and reading pg logs?
jackschultzabout 3 hours ago
I built a tool similar to this end of last year with the idea of making it easier for agents (and humans) to work with postgres and do things like getting summaries when they want to. But then, I realized that these models are trained and really know how to use all parts pg and it was easier to let them do that. There can be cases for this, but the cost in extra tokens and steps using pg vs a tool are so little, it wasn't worth it to keep going.
sashashabout 5 hours ago
It works anywhere you have a standard PostgreSQL connection string.
opemabout 4 hours ago
That we all can see and read from your tools's homepage. Why are you repeating the features here again?
sashashabout 5 hours ago
Hi HN, I’m Alex, a longtime PostgreSQL and Rails/Go/Rust engineer.

I built pgbot because I often needed a quick explanation of what was happening inside a database without first deploying a dashboard, collector, telemetry stack, or separate database.

pgbot is an open-source 5.9 MB Go binary that connects directly to PostgreSQL and returns useful findings in seconds:

pgbot inspect — database health pgbot queries — expensive queries pgbot indexes — risky and unused indexes pgbot ask — answers for humans and agents MCP — lets coding agents inspect PostgreSQL directly

The diagnostic findings are computed deterministically in Go. They are not invented by an LLM.

pgbot is also read-only by design: it inspects the database but never applies changes. An agent can explain and prioritize the evidence, but it cannot silently modify production through pgbot.

Source: https://github.com/pgrundev/pgbot

I’d especially appreciate feedback about missing diagnostic checks, false positives, and the read-only safety model for coding agents.

ahofmannabout 4 hours ago
You should stop posting in your own thread. I vouched for this post, because it looks useful, but I understand why you got flagged.
sashashabout 5 hours ago
Read-only by design: no DDL, DML, or automatic fixes.
michael-sumnerabout 4 hours ago
Be careful as it might be telemetrying the database. How do we know that it is not?
ahofmannabout 4 hours ago
It's open source, so just look "under the hood", I guess?