Beekeeper Studio 5.3 - SQL AI Shell

July 14, 2025 By Matthew Rathbone

A SQL AI Pair Programmer That Doesn’t Need BabySitting

Simply type your questions into Beekeeper’s AI shell, and your AI will explore your schema and run SQL to find out the answer. Even better – the AI shell can check it’s own work, using real data.

The AI shell can do all this and more without any hand holding, manual context fiddling, or copy and pasting of data.

An obviously biased list of our favorite things about the AI shell

It’s smart – no manual context engineering or babysitting required.
Can explore your schema and data without help
Asks permission before it executes any SQL
Runs in a self contained tab (that you can ignore if you like)
Communicates directly with your AI using your own API key, no middle-man servers
Modeled after terminal apps like Aider and Claude Code, our shell can get stuff done.
Easy to disable by a user or administrator
No extra fees, included as part of any paid plan

We’ve been using it for weeks, it’s great. We think you’ll like it. Currently the AI shell is exclusive to paid users of Beekeeper Studio

A Thoughtful AI Implementation

Let’s be real - AI is getting shoved into every piece of software right now and the results aren’t always that useful, and many times it just makes the product worse.

I’ve been resisting adding AI features to Beekeeper Studio for a while for this exact reason – I value user experience a lot, and I didn’t want to ruin that with a half-baked AI integration just because it’s the hot new thing.

Well, after using AI coding agents like Claude Code and Aider the team finally gave it a shot, and boy the results are really great.

Our AI Shell behaves like a coding agent, it’s self contained and doesn’t intrude into the other app experiences, but we gave it a super power – a suite of tools to let it explore your database and run SQL (with permission).

I think the new shell is very useful without spoiling the app. I hope you enjoy using it as much as I do.

Also in this release

The first parts of our plugin system are in place, and the AI shell is in fact deployed using the plugin system. Stay tuned for more news coming soon.
Our new INI based configuration system is live and operational. We’ve started moving configuration to it (away from the database). Read more about it in the docs
We’ve completed a gnarly upgrade from Code Mirror 5 to Code Mirror 6, a much more modern codebase that will let us add improved autocomplete systems soon. Please let us know if you see any issues with the code editor.
A connection quick switcher is now available in the bottom-left of the screen to easily switch between connections in the same window.
Many many smaller PRs to fix and improve the app have been merged. More than I thought to be honest. The full list is below. Great thanks to new and returning community contributors.

PRs in this release

Beekeeper Studio Is A Free & Open Source Database GUI

Best SQL query & editor tool I have ever used. It provides everything I need to manage my database. - ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Mit

Beekeeper Studio is fast, intuitive, and easy to use. Beekeeper supports loads of databases, and works great on Windows, Mac and Linux.

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"Beekeeper Studio completely replaced my old SQL workflow. It's fast, intuitive, and makes database work enjoyable again."

— Alex K., Database Developer

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