If your workflow lives in tmux and a keyboard, a browser-based SQL tool is friction. Quack is a terminal SQL client — a lazygit-style TUI for DuckDB that keeps you in the shell where everything else already runs.
What Quack Is
Quack is a keyboard-driven TUI for writing SQL against DuckDB and other databases. You open it like any CLI tool, point it at a database file, and start querying. No Electron window, no local server spawning in the background, no login screen.
cargo install quack-sql
# or
brew install pondpilot/tap/quack
Then launch it and hit SPC for the leader menu. Ctrl+E runs your query. :q quits. The muscle memory is familiar on purpose.
Why a Terminal Client?
Fits your existing shell workflow. Launch Quack in a tmux pane next to your editor, logs, and SSH sessions. Move between them the same way you already do.
SSH-friendly. Running analytics on a remote box? Quack works over SSH the same way it works locally. No X forwarding, no port tunnels for a web UI.
Keyboard-first. Modal vim-style editing with operator+motion composition, a command palette (Ctrl+P), which-key hints, and a schema explorer (Ctrl+S) you navigate by arrow keys. Your mouse stays untouched.
No context switch. You’re already in a terminal. Stay there.
What You Actually Get
- Vim-style editing with syntax highlighting and autocompletion
- Schema explorer — tree view of catalogs, schemas, tables, views, indexes, functions
- Results browser — paginated, sortable, filterable, with aggregates, sparklines, and export
- Multi-database — DuckDB plus SQLite, PostgreSQL, and MySQL connections
- Session persistence — tabs, editor buffers, and query history restored on relaunch
- Command palette — leader key with which-key hints for 40+ actions, plus snippets
The TUI has three panes you’d expect: schema on the left, editor top-right, results below. Tab cycles through them.
Fits a Scripted Pipeline
Because Quack is a normal CLI binary, it coexists cleanly with the rest of your shell toolkit. Keep ad-hoc exploration interactive in Quack, then drop the final SQL into a .sql file your pipeline already runs through duckdb, make, or a scheduler. Same query, two surfaces.
Install Quack
Grab a release or build from source at the Quack GitHub repository. MIT licensed, no telemetry, no account.