Meet Watson
Your AI detective companion who reviews queries and drops hints
Watson responds with detective flair and SQL guidance
What We Built — a beautiful disaster
Watson Actually Works
The AI assistant is the star. Watson reviews your SQL queries, catches syntax errors, and nudges you toward better practices — all while staying in character as a 1920s detective. "Elementary, my dear querier. Your JOIN syntax appears... questionable."
Built on GPT-4o-mini with careful prompt engineering to keep responses concise and on-theme. The word-by-word typing effect sells the illusion that Watson is thinking through your query in real-time.
The win: Character-driven AI that actually helps you learn SQL without breaking immersion
The Mystery... Too Mysterious
I got ambitious. The "Luna Park Murder Mystery" features 12 interconnected database tables, 260 timestamped records, red herrings, alibi conflicts, and a solution that requires joining at least 6 tables to crack.
Turns out nobody wants to solve a mystery that complex. Including me. I burned out trying to playtest my own creation and realized the difficulty curve went from "tutorial" to "PhD thesis" with nothing in between.
The lesson: Scope creep is real. Sometimes the original SQL Murder Mystery was simple for a reason
Status: Shelved (For Now)
Watson works. The tech works. The mystery is just... too much mystery. Maybe someday I'll revisit with a simpler case — or maybe I'll leave this as a monument to ambition. Either way, the Watson prompt engineering was worth the journey.
Tech Stack
Full-stack setup with a real PostgreSQL database. The infrastructure is solid — it's just waiting for a mystery that doesn't require a detective degree to solve.