I Replaced SQLite's C Driver with 800 Lines of Pure Python Stdlib: What the Docs Don't Tell You About Raw B-Trees, 9-Byte Varints, and 48-Bit Integers

The rules were brutal: Zero third-party runtime dependencies. No pip. No C-extensions. No wheels. Just Python's standard library and a raw binary file stream.

1. The Bet: Why Would Anyone Replace sqlite3?

Every Python developer has written this line:

import sqlite3

conn = sqlite3.connect("app.db")