diff --git a/packages/db/src/connection.ts b/packages/db/src/connection.ts
index 15a3c04c0c..a4d83d2eb6 100644
--- a/packages/db/src/connection.ts
+++ b/packages/db/src/connection.ts
@@ -41,6 +41,11 @@ interface TimedStatementOperationArgs<TValue> {
 }
 
 const DEFAULT_SLOW_DB_QUERY_LOG_THRESHOLD_MS = 100;
+/** 256 MiB page cache. Negative cache_size is kibibytes. */
+export const SQLITE_CACHE_SIZE_KIB = 262_144;
+/** Memory-map the first 1 GiB of the database file. */
+export const SQLITE_MMAP_SIZE_BYTES = 1_073_741_824;
+export const SQLITE_BUSY_TIMEOUT_MS = 5_000;
 const MAX_LOGGED_SQL_LENGTH = 1_000;
 const SQL_TRUNCATION_SUFFIX = "...";
 // Keep ORM-generated quoted identifiers intact. SQLite accepts double-quoted
@@ -171,6 +176,13 @@ export function createConnection(
   sqlite.pragma("journal_mode = WAL");
   // Enable foreign keys
   sqlite.pragma("foreign_keys = ON");
+  // WAL + NORMAL: no fsync per commit. Power loss can drop the last
+  // transactions; it cannot corrupt the file. cache_size/mmap_size replace
+  // the 2 MiB default cache so a multi-GB database is not re-read per query.
+  sqlite.pragma("synchronous = NORMAL");
+  sqlite.pragma(`cache_size = -${SQLITE_CACHE_SIZE_KIB}`);
+  sqlite.pragma(`mmap_size = ${SQLITE_MMAP_SIZE_BYTES}`);
+  sqlite.pragma(`busy_timeout = ${SQLITE_BUSY_TIMEOUT_MS}`);
   instrumentSqliteClient(sqlite, options);
 
   const db = drizzle({ client: sqlite, schema });
diff --git a/packages/db/test/connection.test.ts b/packages/db/test/connection.test.ts
index b70564a1fa..898ab2d250 100644
--- a/packages/db/test/connection.test.ts
+++ b/packages/db/test/connection.test.ts
@@ -1,7 +1,13 @@
+import { mkdtempSync, rmSync } from "node:fs";
+import { tmpdir } from "node:os";
+import { join } from "node:path";
 import { describe, expect, it } from "vitest";
 import { eq } from "drizzle-orm";
 import {
   createConnection,
+  SQLITE_BUSY_TIMEOUT_MS,
+  SQLITE_CACHE_SIZE_KIB,
+  SQLITE_MMAP_SIZE_BYTES,
   type SlowDbQueryLogger,
   type SlowDbQueryLogFields,
 } from "../src/connection.js";
@@ -124,4 +130,36 @@ describe("createConnection", () => {
 
     db.$client.close();
   });
+
+  it("applies the hot-path sqlite pragmas on a file database", () => {
+    const directory = mkdtempSync(join(tmpdir(), "bb-db-pragmas-"));
+    const db = createConnection(join(directory, "bb.db"));
+
+    try {
+      expect(
+        db.$client.prepare("PRAGMA cache_size").get() as {
+          cache_size: number;
+        },
+      ).toEqual({ cache_size: -SQLITE_CACHE_SIZE_KIB });
+      expect(
+        db.$client.prepare("PRAGMA synchronous").get() as {
+          synchronous: number;
+        },
+      ).toEqual({ synchronous: 1 });
+      expect(
+        db.$client.prepare("PRAGMA mmap_size").get() as { mmap_size: number },
+      ).toEqual({ mmap_size: SQLITE_MMAP_SIZE_BYTES });
+      expect(
+        db.$client.prepare("PRAGMA busy_timeout").get() as { timeout: number },
+      ).toEqual({ timeout: SQLITE_BUSY_TIMEOUT_MS });
+      expect(
+        db.$client.prepare("PRAGMA journal_mode").get() as {
+          journal_mode: string;
+        },
+      ).toEqual({ journal_mode: "wal" });
+    } finally {
+      db.$client.close();
+      rmSync(directory, { force: true, recursive: true });
+    }
+  });
 });