grdb

grdb is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from johnrogers/claude-swift-engineering. It costs 53 tokens per session (637 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide to using GRDB.swift, a Swift wrapper for SQLite databases on iPhone, iPad, and Mac, when direct database control is needed.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for raw SQL, joins across four or more tables, window functions, database queues and pools, schema migrations, query-plan analysis, and live query observation.
Why use it?
It helps choose between simpler database tools and GRDB for advanced SQL, large joins, reactive queries, migrations, indexing, or performance-sensitive work.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the swift-engineering plugin — 17 skills, 3 commands, 11 agents shipped together

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/johnrogers/claude-swift-engineering/grdb
Any agent
npx skills add johnrogers/claude-swift-engineering --skill grdb
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/johnrogers/claude-swift-engineering

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install swift-engineering, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 17 skills, 3 commands, 11 agents.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for grdb

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/johnrogers/claude-swift-engineering/grdb.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/johnrogers/claude-swift-engineering/grdb)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/johnrogers/claude-swift-engineering/grdb"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/johnrogers/claude-swift-engineering/grdb.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 53 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 637 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00053 $0.00637
Opus 5 $0.00026 $0.00318
Sonnet 5 $0.00011 $0.00127
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00064

Measured 5d ago against content hash 5eac62e9cab7, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-05, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

grdb scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 5d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

plugins/swift-engineering/skills/grdb/SKILL.md · 58 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 58 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

GRDB

Direct SQLite access using GRDB.swift - type-safe Swift wrapper with full SQLite power when you need it.

Reference Loading Guide

ALWAYS load reference files if there is even a small chance the content may be required. It's better to have the context than to miss a pattern or make a mistake.

Reference Load When
Getting Started Setting up DatabaseQueue or DatabasePool
Queries Writing raw SQL, Record types, type-safe queries
Value Observation Reactive queries, SwiftUI integration
Migrations DatabaseMigrator, schema evolution
Performance EXPLAIN QUERY PLAN, indexing, profiling

When to Use GRDB vs SQLiteData

Scenario Use
Type-safe @Table models SQLiteData
CloudKit sync needed SQLiteData
Complex joins (4+ tables) GRDB
Window functions (ROW_NUMBER, RANK) GRDB
Performance-critical raw SQL GRDB
Reactive queries (ValueObservation) GRDB

Core Workflow

  1. Choose DatabaseQueue (single connection) or DatabasePool (concurrent reads)
  2. Define migrations with DatabaseMigrator
  3. Create Record types (Codable, FetchableRecord, PersistableRecord)
  4. Write queries with raw SQL or QueryInterface
  5. Use ValueObservation for reactive updates

Requirements

  • iOS 13+, macOS 10.15+
  • Swift 5.7+
  • GRDB.swift 6.0+

Common Mistakes

  1. Performance assumptions without EXPLAIN PLAN — Assuming your query is fast or slow without checking EXPLAIN QUERY PLAN is guessing. Always profile queries with EXPLAIN before optimizing.

  2. Missing indexes on WHERE clauses — Queries filtering on non-indexed columns scan the entire table. Index any column used in WHERE, JOIN, or ORDER BY clauses for large tables.

  3. Improper migration ordering — Running migrations out of order or skipping intermediate versions breaks schema consistency. Always apply migrations sequentially; never jump versions.

Read the full file on GitHub · 58 lines

Files

What ships with it

5 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 5d ago First seen · 58 lines · 53 tokens per session scan A 5eac62e9cab7

Subscribe to this mod's changes

grdb is a skill published in the GitHub repository johnrogers/claude-swift-engineering (228 stars, last pushed 7mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 53 tokens to every session and 637 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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