SQLite

SQLite is the easiest database to start with. There's no server to run and no connection string to manage — Dyrected stores everything in a single file on disk. Install @dyrected/db-sqlite, point it at a filename, and pass it as the db key in dyrected.config.ts.

import { defineConfig } from '@dyrected/core'
import { sqliteAdapter } from '@dyrected/db-sqlite'

export default defineConfig({
  db: sqliteAdapter({ filename: './data.db' }),
  collections: [],
  globals: [],
})

Start your app and Dyrected creates data.db in your project (the file is created if it doesn't exist) and prepares the schema. That's the quickest path to a working local app — and ./data.db is the same filename dyrected init scaffolds, so a generated project runs as-is.

Dyrected Cloud manages the database for you. You only configure a db adapter when you self-host. Cloud projects normally omit db. See the Database overview.

Configuration

The SQLite adapter takes a single filename option:

sqliteAdapter({ filename: './data.db' })

A relative path is resolved from wherever your app runs. If you do run SQLite on a server, prefer an absolute path on a durable volume so you always know where the file lives.

How your data is stored

Each collection maps to a table named collection_<slug>. Every document is stored as a JSON data column alongside id, created_at, and updated_at. Globals live in an internal key/value table.

You can filter and sort on any field because the document body is stored as JSON. Fields you mark with promoted: true are also lifted into their own real, typed columns so the database can work with them directly. See Indexes for when to promote a field.

Transactions

The SQLite adapter supports transactions, and workflow transitions rely on them. Because SQLite is a single file, transactions run one at a time — Dyrected serializes them rather than running them concurrently. That is exactly what you want for correctness on a small app, and it's rarely a bottleneck at that scale. See Transactions for details.

When to choose SQLite

SQLite is mainly for local development. It's the zero-setup way to get a Dyrected app running on your machine while you build out your schema and try things.

It can also back a small, low-traffic app on a single persistent server — one that won't scale to multiple instances and doesn't expect heavy concurrent writes. For anything production-facing, though, Postgres is the safer default. Move to it when you outgrow a single node, need higher write concurrency, or want a managed database service.

Don't put the SQLite file on an ephemeral filesystem. Serverless and container platforms (like Vercel functions) often reset the local disk between deploys or scale to more than one instance, which loses or splits your data. Use a durable volume, or use Postgres for those runtimes. See Deployment.