Honker
Sqlite extension in Developer tools
Durable queues, pub/sub and live notifications inside a SQLite file, with no broker and atomic commits alongside business data. Critics note it polls and is weak for claim/ack workflows.
Durable queues, pub/sub and live notifications inside a SQLite file, with no broker and atomic commits alongside business data. Critics note it polls and is weak for claim/ack workflows.
18 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 17
- criticize it
- 1
- approval share
- 94%
Recommended in 2 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 17 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 17 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 2 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Clean, easy-to-use design
“It’s an interesting approach and can be quite fun to use for new projects.”
Comment from 30 Apr 2026 in “Durable queues, streams, pub/sub, and a cron scheduler – inside your SQLite file” “This is the kind of skill-level tool I wish existed earlier”
Comment from 23 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: Honker – Postgres NOTIFY/LISTEN Semantics for SQLite” “Very neat! I like this a lot, nice work.”
Comment from 24 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: Honker – Postgres NOTIFY/LISTEN Semantics for SQLite” - Comment from 23 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: Honker – Postgres NOTIFY/LISTEN Semantics for SQLite”
Push delivery with millisecond latency
“The killer app I was imagining was 1ms reactivity without SQL polling and messaging atomic with business commits”
Comment from 23 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: Honker – Postgres NOTIFY/LISTEN Semantics for SQLite” “push-style event delivery with single-digit millisecond latency without a damon/broker”
Comment from 23 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: Honker – Postgres NOTIFY/LISTEN Semantics for SQLite” “Nice, I had no idea that stat() every 1 ms is so affordable.”
Comment from 23 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: Honker – Postgres NOTIFY/LISTEN Semantics for SQLite” Atomic commits with business data
“The killer app I was imagining was 1ms reactivity without SQL polling and messaging atomic with business commits”
Comment from 23 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: Honker – Postgres NOTIFY/LISTEN Semantics for SQLite” “atomic commit with the business data is the selling point over separate IPC”
Comment from 23 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: Honker – Postgres NOTIFY/LISTEN Semantics for SQLite” “This extension piggyback SQLite native transactions.”
Comment from 23 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: Honker – Postgres NOTIFY/LISTEN Semantics for SQLite” Durable pub/sub on SQLite
“It's good for pubsub but not for claim/ack workflow unless you do If-None-Match CAS semantics on a separate filesystem”
Comment from 23 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: Honker – Postgres NOTIFY/LISTEN Semantics for SQLite” “That's the durable pubsub angle for sure.”
Comment from 23 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: Honker – Postgres NOTIFY/LISTEN Semantics for SQLite”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Weak for claim/ack workflows
“It's good for pubsub but not for claim/ack workflow unless you do If-None-Match CAS semantics on a separate filesystem”
Comment from 23 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: Honker – Postgres NOTIFY/LISTEN Semantics for SQLite” Plain IPC may be faster
“It's neat but I have feeling in vast majority of cases just passing address to one of the IPC methods would be faster”
Comment from 23 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: Honker – Postgres NOTIFY/LISTEN Semantics for SQLite”
What people recommend instead
The same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HonkerThis page | 17 | 1 | 94% | 2 | — | — |
| Turbolite | 9 | 0 | 100% | 1 | — | — |
What people said
17 of the 22 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Live notifications was one of the big missing pieces to implement whole apps on a sqlite backend”
“This polling is inefficient and they should not make it a library which will cause other lazy developers add it to their app.”
“It’s an interesting approach and can be quite fun to use for new projects.”
“at that point you're basically reinventing what Honker does, just with more moving parts”
“Very neat! I like this a lot, nice work.”
“It's good for pubsub but not for claim/ack workflow unless you do If-None-Match CAS semantics on a separate filesystem”
“That's the durable pubsub angle for sure.”
“This is the kind of skill-level tool I wish existed earlier”
“The killer app I was imagining was 1ms reactivity without SQL polling and messaging atomic with business commits”
“Honker seems like a great local replacement”
“atomic commit with the business data is the selling point over separate IPC”
“This extension piggyback SQLite native transactions.”
“It's neat but I have feeling in vast majority of cases just passing address to one of the IPC methods would be faster”
“Cool to see a notify mechanism that works for languages that only have process based concurrency”
“Nice, I had no idea that stat() every 1 ms is so affordable.”
“Clean idea and nice abstraction layer.”
“push-style event delivery with single-digit millisecond latency without a damon/broker”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.