Engine guides

SQLite.

Open any SQLite file, create a new one, query it, diagram it and copy it safely. No server, login or tunnel.

Opening a file#

Choose SQLite in Add a connection and use Open… to pick a file, or New… to create one. Or run plasma open path/to/file.sqlite from a terminal (see Command line); Plasma checks that it is a SQLite database and fills the dialog. Turn on Read-only to open the file without being able to change it: Plasma then opens a read-only file handle and sets query_only.

What works#

Feature	SQLite
SQL editor, results, history, snippets, notebooks, codegen	Yes
Grid editing with conflict detection	Yes
Structure tab	Columns, keys, foreign keys, indexes and triggers; add column, rename column, rename table
ER diagram	Yes
EXPLAIN	Plain EXPLAIN
Export database file copy…	Yes (command palette)
Safe Run, Health, Import wizard, Schema diff, SSH	Not available

Export database file copy… writes a consistent copy of the open file with SQLite’s backup API while the database stays open and writable. To load a CSV into a SQLite database, use SQL, or open the CSV with DuckDB.

Notes#

SQLite has no boolean, array or decimal type. Booleans show as 1 and 0, and NUMERIC is a binary float, so keep exact decimals in TEXT.
Cancel has limits. SQLite offers no way to interrupt a running statement. Plasma checks for a cancel between rows, so a statement that produces no rows for a long time (a huge aggregate) cannot be stopped until it returns.
AI and MCP queries run with query_only set, and ATTACH and DETACH are refused.