Simon Willison has released Datasette 1.0a33, pushing the project closer to a stable 1.0 by extending the ?_extra= query-parameter mechanism — previously limited to table pages — to row and arbitrary SQL query pages as well. The change lets API clients request only the JSON keys they actually need (facet results, row counts, foreign-key metadata, etc.), avoiding the over-fetching that plagued the 0.x API and reducing unnecessary SQL round-trips.
Willison noted that most of the code in this release was written with the help of Claude. The release also ships auto-generated reference documentation for every available extra, with example output captured live at build time from a running Datasette instance — a workflow detail that signals how tightly AI-assisted coding is now woven into mature open-source maintenance cycles.