Re:Pgbot: A 5.9 MB read-only Postgres tool for humans and ag...
by sashash on Tuesday August 25, 2026 @02:30PM
(#49438493)
Hi HN, I’m Alex, a longtime PostgreSQL and Rails/Go/Rust engineer.
I built pgbot because I often needed a quick explanation of what was happening inside a database without first deploying a dashboard, collector, telemetry stack, or separate database.
pgbot is an open-source 5.9 MB Go binary that connects directly to PostgreSQL and returns useful findings in seconds:
pgbot inspect — database health
pgbot queries — expensive queries
pgbot indexes — risky and unused indexes
pgbot ask — answers for humans and agents
MCP — lets coding agents inspect PostgreSQL directly
The diagnostic findings are computed deterministically in Go. They are not invented by an LLM.
pgbot is also read-only by design: it inspects the database but never applies changes. An agent can explain and prioritize the evidence, but it cannot silently modify production through pgbot.
I built pgbot because I often needed a quick explanation of what was happening inside a database without first deploying a dashboard, collector, telemetry stack, or separate database.
pgbot is an open-source 5.9 MB Go binary that connects directly to PostgreSQL and returns useful findings in seconds:
pgbot inspect — database health pgbot queries — expensive queries pgbot indexes — risky and unused indexes pgbot ask — answers for humans and agents MCP — lets coding agents inspect PostgreSQL directly
The diagnostic findings are computed deterministically in Go. They are not invented by an LLM.
pgbot is also read-only by design: it inspects the database but never applies changes. An agent can explain and prioritize the evidence, but it cannot silently modify production through pgbot.
Source: https://github.com/pgrundev/pgbot
I’d especially appreciate feedback about missing diagnostic checks, false positives, and the read-only safety model for coding agents.