We built Former to provide an AI-first development environment for working with data. We’ve seen incredible applications of AI to the software engineering space with Cursor, Windsurf, and others, but we believe that focussing on a product just for data teams is needed for their unique workflows. Former is starting as a full SQL editor experience with an embedded AI that has all the context needed for accurate SQL generation.

We currently support Cursor features like Cmd+K (inline AI edit) and Cmd+L (AI chat with apply). It’s true, Cursor is already useful for writing SQL, but our advantage is in providing context and functionality specific to the data domain, which we believe will enable us to eventually build something far more powerful for data teams than Cursor.

In the long term we see room for an AI coworker that helps you complete all of your data analyst/engineer tasks, but “Cursor for SQL” seems like a good start.

Security is obviously a major consideration for a product that tries to combine AI and data. After speaking to dozens of data analysts and engineers, we found there is a wide spectrum from people who aren't even allowed to use AI at work, to people who will happily send the contents of their entire database to OpenAI. We settled on a middle ground of sending SQL + DB schema to 3rd party AIs, but a privately hosted AI is easy to setup for someone who doesn't want to have anything leave their own infrastructure.

You can access the source code (MIT Licence) and self-host at https://github.com/former-labs/former

We would love any raw feedback. We'd especially love to know what is required to have you start using this tool in your daily workflow. Let us know what you think!

Discord for direct feedback/contact: https://discord.gg/f9evejUUfa