SQLiteGPT

SQLite loadable extension that exposes a gpt() SQL function for querying OpenAI's chat completions API directly from SQL.

Implemented in Rust with rusqlite.

Build

make build

This produces target/release/libsqlitegpt.dylib on macOS, libsqlitegpt.so on Linux, or sqlitegpt.dll on Windows.

Usage

export OPENAI_API_KEY="sk-XXX"
sqlite3 example.sqlite

.load ./target/release/libsqlitegpt
SELECT gpt('Name of the tallest mountain, no explanation');

SELECT
  country,
  gpt('capital of ' || country || ', no explanation') AS capital
FROM users;

The extension's entry point is derived from the file name, so plain .load ./target/release/libsqlitegpt resolves to sqlite3_sqlitegpt_init.

Configuration

Environment variable	Default	Purpose
OPENAI_API_KEY	(required)	OpenAI API key
OPENAI_MODEL	gpt-5.4-mini	Chat completions model
SQLITEGPT_NO_CACHE	(unset)	Set to any value to disable response caching

Notes

• gpt() is synchronous: each row blocks on the HTTP round-trip. For non-trivial result sets this is slow and consumes API credits per row.
• Responses are cached in-process by (model, prompt). Repeating an identical prompt within the same SQLite session reuses the prior answer. Set SQLITEGPT_NO_CACHE to disable.
• The HTTP client uses a 60s global timeout, so a hung request cannot stall a query indefinitely.
• NULL input propagates: gpt(NULL) returns NULL without contacting OpenAI.
• The function is registered with SQLITE_DIRECTONLY, so it cannot be invoked from views, triggers, CHECK/DEFAULT clauses, expression/partial indexes, or generated columns. This prevents a hostile database file from triggering network calls (and API spend) just by being opened.
• The function is not marked SQLITE_DETERMINISTIC because the model's output is not stable across calls.

Development

The crate is split into a workspace: sqlitegpt-core holds the logic and tests (linked against bundled SQLite), and the top-level sqlitegpt crate is the cdylib shim that exposes sqlite3_sqlitegpt_init.

make test   # cargo test -p sqlitegpt-core --release