Migraters

Migraters allows you to save SQL changes during development so they can be applied upstream later. As a codebase grows in complexity and team size, keeping those changes tracked and in sync becomes harder. Migraters is built for that.

The typical workflow is:

• On development, create one or more migration files, test them, and run migrate up.
• On deploy, those scripts are copied to production and migrate up is run again, so the upstream database matches development.

The migrate commands are available in many languages and support many SQL dialects.

Install skill

Agent skill for Claude or Cursor: skill/SKILL.md.

npx skills add https://github.com/deterministic-code/migraters/tree/main/skill -g -a cursor -a claude-code -y --copy

Install

Install from npm

npm install @deterministic-code/migraters

Skill Prompts

Natural-language prompts the skill maps straight to CLI commands:

Quick example

user.sql:

CREATE TABLE users (
  id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY,
  email TEXT NOT NULL
);

npx migrate-init --language typescript --dialect sqlite
npx migrate-setup --provider sqlite --connection ./app.sqlite
npx migrate-create --provider sqlite --name add_users
touch user.sql
cat user.sql > sql/sqlite/migrations/0001_add_users_up.sql
npx migrate-up --provider sqlite --connection ./app.sqlite

Commands

init

The migrate-init command installs language and datasource dependencies and builds the migrate commands.

npx migrate-init --language typescript --dialect sqlite --dialect postgres
npx migrate-init --language csharp --dialect sqlite
npx migrate-init --language rust --dialect sqlite

setup

Creates the migrates and migrate_logs tables and the migrations directory. Idempotent.

npx migrate-setup --provider <sqlite|postgres|mysql|sqlserver|oracle> --connection <url> [--migrations-path <dir>] [--and-up] [--create-database] [--batch-separator <token>]

--create-database creates the database named in --connection if it does not exist. --and-up runs migrate-up immediately after setup. Default migrations directory is ./sql/<dialect>/migrations.

up

Applies every pending migration, each in its own transaction.

npx migrate-up --provider <…> --connection <url> [--migrations-path <dir>] [--migrations-root <dir>] [--one] [--batch-separator <token>]

--migrations-root looks under <root>/<dialect>/migrations and defaults to sql. It is ignored when --migrations-path is set. --one applies only the next pending migration. A batch-separator line starts with GO by default (sqlcmd-style), or with --batch-separator. A trailing -- comment or YYYY-MM-DD date is allowed. Each batch is executed separately.

down

Rolls back the most recently applied migration, one step. Type confirm at the prompt, or pass --confirm.

npx migrate-down --provider <…> --connection <url> [--migrations-path <dir>] [--migrations-root <dir>] [--confirm] [--batch-separator <token>]

create

Writes the next <NNNN>_<name>_up.sql and <NNNN>_<name>_down.sql pair. The name must match ^[a-z][a-z0-9_]*$.

npx migrate-create --provider <…> --name <snake_case_slug> [--migrations-path <dir>]

API

The four IMigrater verbs are one contract in every language: argv in cli.yaml, IMigrater in api.yaml. Each language implements that interface. Catalog insert and delete stay inside up and down. migrate-init lives only in cli.yaml.

Language support

Providers

sqlite, postgres, mysql, sqlserver, and oracle.

When --connection is omitted, the runner reads the first set environment variable for that dialect:

Specification

Shared argv, flags, aliases, exit codes, and command behavior live in cli.yaml. IMigrater (setup, up, down, create) lives in api.yaml. migrate-init is CLI-only. SQL spelling stays a provider detail.