Here's a breakdown of the key themes from the Hacker News discussion about SnapQL, organized with direct quotes and attributions:
Initial Positive Reactions and Use Case Validation
Several users expressed excitement and saw immediate value in the project.
- jaimin888patel: "awesome work nick, literally been asking for a vibe coding SQL interface for months"
- zicon35: "congrats on the launch! This looks very interesting"
- jasonthorsness: "Looks useful! And the system prompt didn't require too much finessing. For analytical purposes, this text-to-SQL is the future; it's already huge with Snowflake."
Differentiation and Competition
A significant theme revolves around how SnapQL differentiates itself from existing tools in the space. Users and the creator discussed existing competitors and the importance of standing out.
- esafak: "There are competitors with a GUI too, such as https://www.sqlchat.ai/ and <a href="https://www.jetbrains.com/datagrip/features/ai/ I wish you luck in refining your differentiation."
- BenderV: "Selfless plug, our own tool => https://www.myriade.ai...Can't agree more with you [esafak]. It's about distribution (which Snowflake/Databricks/... have) or differentiation."
- nicktikhonov explicitly addresses competition, pointing out SnapQL's strengths: "The first [SQLChat.ai] doesn't have good UX and the second [DataGrip AI] isn't open source. SnapQL is both :)"
"Everything Runs Locally" Misconception and Data Privacy
A major point of contention was the claim of "Everything runs locally," as the tool uses OpenAI's APIs. This raised concerns about data privacy and where queries are processed.
- GarrickDrgn: "Am I misunderstanding something? How is this 'Everything runs locally' if it's talking to OpenAI's APIs?"
- whilenot-dev: "This app is using OpenAI via the ai package[0][1], so 'Everything runs locally' is definitely misleading." Followed by links to the codebase.
- kokanee: "It is a web app, though. You just aren't running the server, OpenAI is. And you're packaging the front end in electron instead of chrome to make it feel as if it all runs locally, even though it doesn't."
- nicktikhonov attempted to clarify: "What I meant was that it isn't a web app and I don't store your connection strings or query results. I'll make this more clear."
- omega3: "You might not but openai does."
- nessbot: "But it knows what you're querying, which depending on what you're doing may also give away a good bit about whats in the DB."
- nicktikhonov refuted one specific privacy claim: "That makes no sense. OpenAI doesn't know the secret database connection string or any query results. Perhaps you should have read the code before making baseless claims."
Licensing and Open Source Status
Several users noted the lack of a clear license and pointed out that the project is technically not open source as a result.
- un1970ix: "Your project is source-available, not open-source. Consider adding a license."
- kokanee: "Side note: I don't see a license anywhere, so technically it isn't open source."
Future Feature Requests and Roadmap
Users suggested several improvements and expansions to SnapQL's functionality, and the creator shared some of the planned roadmap.
- kebsup: "I was looking for something like this that supports graphs."
- nicktikhonov: "Graph generation is next on the list."
- s1mplicissimus: "Are there plans to support other LLM sources, in particular ollama?"
- nicktikhonov: "Yes! https://github.com/NickTikhonov/snap-ql/issues/1"
- nicktikhonov: "I'd love to be able to support more models. That's one of the issues in the repo right now. And I'd be more than happy to welcome contributions to add this and other features"