Getting started

Install

Search Pitta in the Extensions view, or from a terminal:

code --install-extension DipeshShrestha.pitta-db

Pitta is also on Open VSX for VSCodium, Cursor, Windsurf and Gitpod.

Requires VS Code 1.90 or newer. There are no native modules and no separate runtime to install: one VSIX works on every platform, and the SQLite and PostgreSQL-grammar engines are WebAssembly shipped inside it.

Running against a remote?

Pitta runs in the workspace extension host, so under Remote-SSH, WSL or a dev container the database connection is made from the remote machine. Install it on the remote, and read Remote development before debugging a connection that "works in psql".

Add a connection

1. Click the Pitta icon in the activity bar, then + — or run Pitta: Add Connection from the command palette.
2. Pick the engine. The form redraws itself from that driver's own field list, so a MongoDB profile asks for a replica set and a Redis profile asks for a mode rather than for a database name that does not exist.
3. Fill in the connection. If you already have a URI, paste it into the host field — it is parsed and split across the form.
4. Test Connection before saving. It resolves the secret, opens a real session, reads the server version, and closes it.

The password goes to your OS keychain through VS Code's SecretStorage. It is never written to settings.json, a workspace file, or a log line, and it is never sent to the connection form itself — the form holds a reference, and the resolution happens in the extension host.

See Connections for where a profile is stored, how to share one with a team, and every way a secret can be supplied.

Tag the environment

Every connection is dev, staging or prod. This is not decoration:

• A prod connection is coloured everywhere it appears — the tree, the status bar, the results panel.
• Destructive statements on prod require you to type the connection name back. A dialog you can dismiss with a click gets dismissed reflexively.
• prod is excluded from query history by default.

Set it now rather than later. Safety and guards is the full list of what changes.

Browse

Expand the connection → database → schema → table. The tree is lazy and paged: levels load as you open them, and a level with more objects than pitta.explorer.pageSize ends in a Show more entry rather than handing VS Code fifty thousand items.

Click a table, or run Open Data, to get the grid. See The data grid.

Or write a query

Pitta: New Query opens a file in the connected engine's own language — .sql, .mongodb.js, or .redis. The status bar at the bottom right shows which connection and database it runs against; click it to change.

Run the statement under the cursor with Ctrl+Enter / Cmd+Enter.

Action	Shortcut
Run the statement under the cursor	Ctrl+Enter / Cmd+Enter
Run the selection	Ctrl+Shift+Enter / Cmd+Shift+Enter
Run every statement in the file	Ctrl+Alt+Enter / Cmd+Alt+Enter
Cancel the running query	Ctrl+Shift+C / Cmd+Shift+C

See Query mode.

Where to go next

• Connections — profiles, secrets, sharing, environments.
• Connection recipes — a working setup per hosting provider.
• The data grid — filtering, editing, the DML preview.
• Query mode — completion, notebooks, history, saved queries.
• Safety and guards — what Pitta refuses, and how to change it.
• Troubleshooting — when it does not connect.