Building SQLite with a small swarm

9 days ago

Tasked Claude, Codex, and Gemini to build a SQLite-like engine in Rust, resulting in ~19k lines of code.
Implemented features include parser, planner, executor, storage, B+trees, WAL, recovery, joins, aggregates, indexing, and transaction semantics.
Used 282 unit tests for validation, all passing.
Workflow involved bootstrap phase for initial setup and worker phase with six agents (2x Claude, 2x Codex, 2x Gemini) working in parallel.
Coordination challenges: 54.5% of commits were related to lock/claim coordination.
Key success factors: oracle-style validation, high test cadence, strong module boundaries.
Coalescer agent for deduplication was implemented but not effectively used during the project.
Takeaways: parallelism requires strict task boundaries, shared state docs are crucial, tests ensure consistency.
Future work includes better observability, tracking substantive run rate, and improving commit messages for all agents.
Code size snapshot: 18,650 lines of Rust code, 199 lines of Shell, totaling 18,849 lines.

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