Show HN: Open-source database CLI that doubles as an MCP server for agents

Hi HN, I work on WhoDB (a database management tool) and we've recently added a lot of updates to our cli so I wanted to share it here.

WhoDB (https://github.com/clidey/whodb) is a database management tool for SQL and NoSQL databases, runs in your browser, can be launched via Docker, and is available on the Apple, Microsoft, and Snap store. The WhoDB cli is both an interactive and command driven client that shares the same WhoDB Go backend and provides a TUI around it alongside an MCP server.

I use the mcp within Claude Code to help me when I develop with local databases (checking schemas, data, running actual SQL, etc) although CC is pretty good with this in general. I haven't yet tried it out with Codex so cannot comment on that.

We've added (in no particular order):

- DuckDB support

- TiDB support

- Updated layout system to support multiple windows

- SQL formatter and extended autocomplete

- SSH support (still testing this one)

- ER diagram generation

- EXPLAIN plan generation

- Mock data generation

- Simple table data audit functionality

- Read-only mode

- Streaming AI chat

- CLI profiles

- Different theme support

- JSON, NDJSON, CSV outputs

Disclaimer: a lot of the CLI code was AI-generated (mostly Claude Code). I point it to existing repos using the same libraries as reference, which helps since I don't have deep CLI development experience.

If you want to install it, there are several ways:

(1) curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/clidey/whodb/main/cli/inst... | bash

(2) brew install whodb-cli

(3) npm install -g @clidey/whodb-cli

(4) docker pull clidey/whodb-cli:latest

(5) Grab the executables from our latest Github release

If you want to add it to CC:

(1) claude mcp add whodb -- npx -y @clidey/whodb-cli mcp serve

(2) or you can configure it with database credentials via an env variable profile: claude mcp add whodb -e WHODB_POSTGRES='[{"alias":"dev","host":"localhost","user":"user","password":"pass","database":"mydb","port":"5432"}]' -- whodb-cli mcp serve

It should work with Codex as such: codex mcp add whodb -- whodb-cli mcp serve

Happy to hear your thoughts on how you might use this, or what additions you might find interesting. Thanks for reading!