cinchdb 0.1.18

A Git-like SQLite database management system with branching and multi-tenancy

CinchDB

Git-like SQLite database management with branching and multi-tenancy

NOTE: CinchDB is in early alpha. This is project to test out an idea. Do not use this in production.

CinchDB is for projects that need fast queries, isolated data per-tenant or even per-user, and a branchable database that makes it easy to merge changes between branches.

On a meta level: I made this because I wanted a database structure that I felt comfortable letting AI agents take full control over, safely, and I didn't want to run my own Postgres instance somewhere or pay for it on e.g. Neon - I don't need hyperscaling, I just need super fast queries.

Because it's so lightweight and its only dependencies are pydantic, requests, and Typer, it makes for a perfect local development database that can be controlled programmatically.

# Recommended: Install with uv (faster, better dependency resolution)
uv add cinchdb

# Or with pip
pip install cinchdb

# Initialize project
cinch init 

# Create and query tables
cinch table create users name:TEXT email:TEXT
cinch query "SELECT * FROM users"

# Git-like branching
cinch branch create feature
cinch branch switch feature
cinch table create products name:TEXT price:REAL
cinch branch merge-into-main feature

# Multi-tenant support
cinch tenant create customer_a
cinch query "SELECT * FROM users" --tenant customer_a

# Tenant encryption (bring your own keys)
cinch tenant create secure_customer --encrypt --key="your-secret-key"
cinch query "SELECT * FROM users" --tenant secure_customer --key="your-secret-key"

# Future: Remote connectivity planned for production deployment

# Autogenerate Python SDK from database
cinch codegen generate python cinchdb_models/

What is CinchDB?

CinchDB combines SQLite with Git-like workflows for database schema management:

• Branch schemas like code - create feature branches, make changes, merge back
• Multi-tenant isolation - shared schema, isolated data per tenant
• Automatic change tracking - all schema changes tracked and mergeable
• Safe structure changes - change merges happen atomically with zero rollback risk (seriously)
• Type-safe Python SDK - Python SDK with full type safety
• SDK generation from database schema - Generate a typesafe SDK from your database models for CRUD operations

Installation

Requires Python 3.10+:

pip install cinchdb

Quick Start

CLI Usage

# Initialize project
cinch init my_app
cd my_app

# Create schema on feature branch
cinch branch create user-system
cinch table create users username:TEXT email:TEXT
cinch view create active_users "SELECT * FROM users WHERE created_at > datetime('now', '-30 days')"

# Merge to main
cinch branch merge-into-main user-system

# Multi-tenant operations
cinch tenant create customer_a
cinch tenant create customer_b
cinch query "SELECT COUNT(*) FROM users" --tenant customer_a

Python SDK

import cinchdb
from cinchdb.models import Column

# Local connection
db = cinchdb.connect("myapp")

# Create schema
db.create_table("posts", [
    Column(name="title", type="TEXT",nullable=False),
    Column(name="content", type="TEXT")
])

# Query data
results = db.query("SELECT * FROM posts WHERE title LIKE ?", ["%python%"])

# CRUD operations - single insert
post_id = db.insert("posts", {"title": "Hello World", "content": "First post"})

# Batch insert - multiple records at once
posts = db.insert("posts",
    {"title": "First", "content": "Content 1"},
    {"title": "Second", "content": "Content 2"},
    {"title": "Third", "content": "Content 3"}
)

# Or with a list using star expansion
post_list = [
    {"title": "Post A", "content": "Content A"},
    {"title": "Post B", "content": "Content B"}
]
results = db.insert("posts", *post_list)

db.update("posts", post_id, {"content": "Updated content"})

Architecture

Storage Architecture

CinchDB uses a tenant-first storage model where database and branch are organizational metadata concepts, while tenants represent the actual isolated data stores:

.cinchdb/
├── metadata.db                    # Organizational metadata
└── {database}-{branch}/           # Context root (e.g., main-main, prod-feature)
    ├── {shard}/                   # SHA256-based sharding (first 2 chars)
    │   ├── {tenant}.db            # Actual SQLite database
    │   └── {tenant}.db-wal        # WAL file
    └── ...

Key Design Decisions:

• Tenant-first: Each tenant gets its own SQLite database file
• Flat hierarchy: Database/branch form a single context root, avoiding deep nesting
• Hash sharding: Tenants are distributed across 256 shards using SHA256 for scalability
• Lazy initialization: Tenant databases are created on first access, not on tenant creation
• WAL mode: All databases use Write-Ahead Logging for better concurrency

This architecture enables:

• True multi-tenant isolation at the file system level
• Efficient branching without duplicating tenant data
• Simple backup/restore per tenant
• Horizontal scaling through sharding

Components

• Python SDK: Core functionality for local development
• CLI: Full-featured command-line interface

Security

CinchDB uses standard SQLite security features:

• WAL mode: Better concurrency and crash recovery
• Foreign key constraints: Enforced data integrity
• File permissions: Standard OS-level access control
• Multi-tenant isolation: Separate database files per tenant

For production deployments, consider additional security measures at the infrastructure level.

Development

git clone https://github.com/russellromney/cinchdb.git
cd cinchdb
make install-all
make test

Future

CinchDB focuses on being a simple, reliable SQLite management layer. Future development will prioritize:

• Remote API server improvements
• Better CLI user experience
• Performance optimizations
• Additional language SDKs (TypeScript, Go, etc.)
• Enhanced codegen features

License

Apache 2.0 - see LICENSE

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CinchDB - Database management as easy as version control