Hamilton Ulmer

Continuing the semantic code-folding design exploration. Instead of showing the typical "..." button, it shows an LLM summary of what's folded. Like "calculate 30-day revenue" for a collapsed CTE.

Not sure if this would be useful yet!

I jokingly call it "vibescaling"

I like the “retvrn to terminals” discourse around UIs, but imo it misses why old terminal programs were (or were not) good. So it’s a boring aesthetic argument and not a functional one based on how humans consume information.

only took me two years before I needed to do my own safety triangle implementation

this works great for our upcoming "quick look" editor features

aside from function docs, what other quick look features would you like in the DuckDB UI?

Software Engineer - Frontend Join MotherDuck as a Frontend Software Engineer and help design intuitive, delightful interfaces that redefine how people interact with data—making complex workflows feel simple and even a little fun.

Want to work on features like Instant SQL? My team is hiring!

jobs.ashbyhq.com/MotherDuck/3...

YouTube video by Data Council Instant Preview Mode Real Time Feedback to Make SQL Data Exploration Fly

My Data Council talk on Instant SQL is up on YouTube!

Instant SQL is MotherDuck's new realtime ad hoc querying and data debugging mode.

I go into details, but the talk itself is really about designing tools that both require mastery AND enable joyful flow.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSeB...

This is tomorrow!

lu.ma/xakrgxqu

Stay in Flow with MotherDuck's Instant SQL - May 21 · Luma Imagine writing SQL queries that give you instant visual feedback, transforming your entire data exploration experience. See how MotherDuck's Instant SQL…

Hear more about how we built Instant SQL by signing up here:

I'm going to be talking online about the "why" and "how" of Instant SQL, our new ad hoc querying experience that enables keystroke-fast previews of results & deeper introspection into your query's data flow.

Weds. May 21st, 9:30am PDT

link in reply!

Possibly! We do have a plan to open source our UI, but not a firm timeline. Once that's done, Instant SQL will be freely available (w/ source) for anyone to integrate into their editor.

If you want to work on data-intensive UIs combining the best of databases and dataviz, my team is hiring. Send me a message in chat and let's connect. I'll have a JD up once I recover!

Instant SQL is here: Speedrun ad-hoc queries as you type - MotherDuck Blog Type, see, tweak, repeat! Instant SQL is now in Preview in MotherDuck and the DuckDB Local UI. Bend reality with SQL superpowers to get real-time query results as you type. | Reading time: 8 min read

Read more details about Instant SQL below

motherduck.com/blog/introdu...

I just gave a talk at Data Council about Instant SQL and will be sharing that once it's available. It's a really fun talk. Here's the vibe

Instant SQL works by using samples / subsets of data. Of course, at any point, you can run the actual query against your whole data set. Think of it as a complement to running your query, not an alternative.

Instant SQL is great for humans, but it also works GREAT with AI tools. Any suggestion made by an LLM is instantly previewed as you go, giving you a lot more confidence when working with SQL and AI.

Because we have access to the whole pipeline of the query, Instant SQL can dissect results, making it easy to debug complicated formulas and regular expressions

It's like we've turned your query into a big excel function that returns a list of expression trees on every keystroke

on every keystroke, Instant SQL parses the query, analyzes it, and caches just enough to render a preview of the SELECT statement where your cursor is. This enables inspection of CTEs and subqueries. Make a change, then go downstream, and see that change instantly reflected.

Instant SQL follows Bret Victor's 2 rules from "Inventing on Principle": when you make a change in your software, there can't be a delay and there can't be anything hidden

Using DuckDB's internals, we've built a realtime query-as-you-type system. But it does a lot more, too:

So thrilled to announce we've released Instant SQL in both the MotherDuck and DuckDB UIs!

It's a new interaction pattern for writing SQL queries that provides realtime result previews and deep query inspection & debugging. Bye bye run button 👋

Truly, literally only possible with DuckDB

hah thanks! This is a one-way door for me; I can't go back to constantly mashing the run query button for every small change

Instant Preview Mode has been achieved internally

Migrating over my DuckDB AST path generation code to our UI. The way I've done gut-checks on the grammar is to use this CodeMirror semantic highlighting extension I wrote

We can implement a very long tail of unique features with the path generator, including instant preview mode

great feedback, thanks!

now at the top of HN!

this UI is V1, & a big project to hoist the MotherDuck UI into a new context. I can't wait to add more features!

If you've talked to me about how you use the CLI in the last month, please know you've made an impact on our roadmap!

Also, Column Explorer w/ max threads = 🌠

In DuckDB land, it's common for databases to have paths. Rather than making icons for each type, we opted to separate memory vs. on-disk & add a location icon on the right. (This serves as a copy button too!)

We'll add custom icons for external dbs later (e.g. sqlite)

Minimal onboarding. We assume DuckDB CLI users understand the basic mechanics of running queries. Our onboarding shows the relationship between the editors and the catalog on the left hand side.

So thrilled the DuckDB UI is out to the world!

Read the post, but wanted to also share a couple small design details we thought about in thread

a gratifying animation (and much lower instance size changing times in the MotherDuck UI)

Are you ready?

03.12.2025