Your Python Tool Needs Persistence - It Doesn't Need a Database Server

At some point, every internal tool, CLI utility, or developer script needs to remember something between runs. A list of environments. A job queue. A cache of API responses. A set of user preferences. The default response is to reach for a database. Set up SQLite, write a schema, maybe add an ORM. That's fifteen minutes of infrastructure for a problem that might not warrant it, and fifteen minutes that turns into an hour once you factor in migrations, connection handling, and test fixtures. Ther