DuckDB 1.5: My First Time Trying the New CLI (Colors, Pager, VARIANT type)

DuckDB 1.5 is here, and I finally took it for a hands-on spin. In this video, I walk through the DuckDB 1.5 release highlights with live terminal examples, including the revamped CLI experience, prompt customization, paging results, the experimental PEG parser for better suggestions, and the new VARIANT type for semi-structured data. What you’ll see in this walkthrough: - The new DuckDB CLI UX and color palette customization - Dynamic prompts (database + schema context, configurable prompt formatting) - Using the built-in pager for large query results - Autocomplete and improved suggestions with the PEG parser - VARIANT type basics: storing mixed types in one column, extracting nested fields with dot notation - Quick notes on other updates like `read_duckdb()` If you’re using DuckDB in the terminal a lot, this release has some genuinely quality-of-life upgrades. Video Links: https://duckdb.org/2026/03/09/announcing-duckdb-150 My Links: My bespoke devrel company: https://www.earlysignal.tech/ Substack: https://thefulldatastack.substack.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hoytemerson/ Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 03:15 New CLI Colors FAIL 07:14 What is this dynamic prompt? 08:53: Now I get how to change the CLI colors! 14:24 I still don't understand the dynamic prompts 18:25 Update .tables and DESCRIBE 22:02 Accessing the last result NICE! 24:40 The Pager feature is cool 29:30 PEG parser CONVENIENT! 34:50 What is a VARIANT type? 40:27 NOW I GET IT! 43:05 VARIANT type is kinda blowing my mind 45:37 I don't really care about the other features 47:24 That was a BIG update! Closing thoughts