I think the advantage of the sqlite database is that you retain more context for any given command (e.g. what the current working directory was, ...) in a structured way (it is a database after all).

That stored context can then be used to query the database (e.g. filter the history to only show commands that were executed in the cwd).

These queries are the point of using sqlite, not anything security as far as I can tell.

I just don't see how sqlite is up to this; the problem clearly requires PostgreSQL.

No you know what it requires? A 100 person company with 20 microservices and a ceph cluster. /s

I am not sure how many writes per second you have on your shell history, but sqlite is not only up to the task, everything else is overkill.

Additionally not having to run a database, but having your history in a file has advantages for that usecase as well.

sqlite is fine for this usage.