November 2, 2025
Is it Alembic in a trench coat?
CLI to manage your SQL database schemas and migrations
New database helper drops—crowd asks if it’s just the same tool in a new coat
TLDR: A new tool called shed promises easy database migrations but relies on Alembic, prompting claims it’s just a wrapper. Commenters argue over using SQLite at home versus the real database in containers, and praise Redgate, underscoring how teams still battle to keep schemas consistent across environments.
A new command‑line toy called shed claims to wrangle database changes, clone prod to dev, and even spit out JSON blueprints to validate AI output. But the crowd instantly smelled a remix: it’s built on Alembic, the long‑running Python migration engine. “Ahh, this is also Alembic,” quipped Shorel, and the vibe turned from discovery to ‘isn’t this just a nicer coat?’ Fans of other camps piled in: juangacovas name‑drops Phinx in PHP as a years‑long breeze, while another commenter shrugs, ‘I mostly use an ORM’—meaning they let their app code handle schema tweaks.
Then came the spice. Shed’s default setup suggests SQLite locally and Postgres in production, and whilenot-dev clutched pearls: “Hold on, people actually do that? Just run the real database in a container!” Enterprise folks waved their badges, touting Redgate SQL Compare as a “game changer” for multi‑tenant sanity. So the thread became a reality show: lightweight wrappers vs. heavy tools, containers vs. convenience, and whether shed is Alembic in sunglasses or a helpful on‑ramp to migrations. For curious devs, there’s a repo: shed. For the rest, the memes wrote themselves: trench‑coat Alembic, SQLite at home, Postgres at work. Plus free JSON schemas for models, if that helps.
Key Points
- •Shed is a CLI tool that manages SQL database schemas using SQLModel and Alembic.
- •It can export JSON Schemas from Pydantic BaseModel v2 models for data validation.
- •The tool supports creating a project scaffold with migrations and environment-specific configs (SQLite for local, PostgreSQL for production).
- •Installation is available via uv or pipx from the project’s GitHub repository.
- •Features include cloning prod to dev databases, short Alembic commands, an Alembic wrapper, and auto-generating Alembic config files (alembic.ini, env.py, script.py.mako).