I built DB Thing during the Tambo hackathon and yes, most of it came together in the last 24 hours. This is a very small confession: I love databases, but I hate the friction of sketching schemas, writing migrations, and guessing where performance will break. So I decided to build something that lets me talk to the database like a human and get back a design I can actually use.
This project is personal and a little scrappy by design. It's a proof-of-concept that shows how conversational AI and a visual editor can make designing schemas faster and less painful.
Why I built this (short answer)
Because I wanted to stop fighting my schema. I wanted to prototype data models faster.
What it actually does
At a glance:
- Interactive schema design via plain-English prompts — tell the app what you need, and it drafts a schema.
- Visual ERD generation so relationships are obvious and editable.
- AI suggestions for normalization, indexes, and performance improvements (powered through the Tambo integrations I used during the hackathon).
- Generates migration-friendly SQL for PostgreSQL.
The tech I used
- Next.js + React + TypeScript for the frontend
- Tailwind CSS for fast styling
- Tambo AI + Google Gemini for the conversational and code-generation bits
- React Flow for ERD visuals
- Small bits of Prisma/Drizzle/SQL generators under the hood
- SQLite for storing shared schema
All of this was thrown together under the clock in a hackathon environment, so it favors iteration over perfection.
How it works (simple)
The Tambo component system lets the AI return interactive UI components directly in the chat. Instead of a wall of text, the model can render an ER diagram component you can click and tweak.
// Example: AI generates this component in response to "Design a blog database"
<ERDiagram
tables={[...]}
relationships={[...]}
/>
When to use it
- Rapid prototyping and sketching data models
- Cleaning up legacy schemas before migrations
- Teaching or demoing data modeling concepts to non-database folks
Cherry on top
Generated database designs can be shared via a link so you can send a working ERD to a teammate, drop it in a PR, or paste it in a Slack thread and get feedback instantly. Links preserve the diagram state and let others open the design in the app for viewing. In the future, I will add a feature to 'fork' so others can tweak the design, maybe even some team collaboration stuff.
Final note
This began as a messy, last-24-hours Tambo hackathon project, built fast and left open for improvements. Big thanks to Tambo for running the hackathon. If you want to try it or collaborate, open an issue or a PR — I'd love to see what you build.
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