Simon Willison: porting Mozilla browser-compat data to SQLite and Datasette

Core idea

Simon Willison shows off a mini-project, simonw/browser-compat-db: an AI-assisted port of Mozilla's browser-compat-data into SQLite, browsable interactively through Datasette Lite, with permissive CORS for cross-origin use.

Context

Posted June 24, 2026, it continues Willison's running series demonstrating how LLM tools collapse "data utility" weekend projects into a couple of hours. GitHub Actions keep the database fresh when the upstream source updates.

Why it matters

For engineers it is a concrete pattern: take an existing open-source dataset, turn it into queryable SQLite and publish via a Datasette frontend, all with an AI copilot. The recipe transfers directly to other datasets.

Details / arguments

• Repo: simonw/browser-compat-db.
• GitHub Actions workflow keeps data fresh.
• Open CORS headers enable in-browser fetch from Datasette Lite.
• An example of why SQLite + Datasette remains one of the best stacks for quick data publishing.