I've been trying to work locally on Team 51 sites, using Studio to clone the Staging site from Dotcom.
I'm not using the nightly build version of Studio.

Problem 1: database suddenly disconnected upon opening app

I had been working on a clone just fine until one day I opened up Studio and the site started throwing a "Error establishing a database connection" message.

Tried to use Claude to remedy:

- Found the issue — the db.php drop-in is missing. Let me verify the full picture.
- The db.php drop-in is missing from wp-content/ — that’s the file that intercepts WordPress’s database calls and routes  them to SQLite instead of MySQL. Without it, WordPress tries to connect to a MySQL server that doesn’t exist. I’ll create it by copying the template and filling in the correct path.

... but it reset the database instead of fixing it, so I bailed and decided to re-clone. (At the time, I didn't know I could have just tried pulling the database again from Dotcom.)

Problem 2: fatal errors

Next, I thought it would make sense to clone Production, as I wanted to work with actual content, not placeholder.

It was super slow. Front-end eventually loaded, but wp-admin timed out:

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 268435456 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 1323008 bytes) in /wordpress/wp-content/plugins/jetpack/vendor/jetpack-autoloader/class-php-autoloader.php on line 102

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 268435456 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 1323008 bytes) in /wordpress/wp-includes/sodium_compat/autoload-php7.php on line 27

Problem 3: export compatibility

I was curious if it was just the database size that Studio couldn't handle, so I tried to use its native Export feature and import into Local. This didn't work either (I now understand the formats are not compatible). As a user, I would expect the export format to work in other commonly used WordPress tools, but maybe this is asking too much.

Success: re-cloning staging again

Creating a fresh clone of the Staging site worked and I was able to get up and running again.

Problem 4: more fatal errors

After Staging had launched, we updated it to match Production's database. When I tried to re-clone Staging again, I ran into the same slowness I experienced in Problem 2.

• The front-end loads, although it takes a very long time (around a minute)
• Loading wp-admin causes my laptop fan to run excessively hard (which I've never heard before on my M4 mac) and gives me a critical error:

Fatal error: Uncaught PDOException: SQLSTATE< />HY000< />: General error: 5 database is locked in /wordpress/wp-content/mu-plugins/sqlite-database-integration/wp-includes/database/sqlite/class-wp-pdo-mysql-on-sqlite.php:1592 Stack trace: #0 /wordpress/wp-content/mu-plugins/sqlite-database-integration/wp-includes/database/sqlite/class-wp-pdo-mysql-on-sqlite.php(1592): PDOStatement->execute() #1 /wordpress/wp-content/mu-plugins/sqlite-database-integration/wp-includes/database/sqlite/class-wp-pdo-mysql-on-sqlite.php(921): WP_PDO_MySQL_On_SQLite->commit_wrapper_transaction() #2 /wordpress/wp-content/mu-plugins/sqlite-database-integration/wp-includes/database/sqlite/class-wp-sqlite-driver.php(160): WP_PDO_MySQL_On_SQLite->query('SET SESSION sql...', 5) #3 /wordpress/wp-content/mu-plugins/sqlite-database-integration/wp-includes/sqlite/class-wp-sqlite-db.php(128): WP_SQLite_Driver->query('SET SESSION sql...') #4 /wordpress/wp-content/mu-plugins/sqlite-database-integration/wp-includes/sqlite/class-wp-sqlite-db.php(330): WP_SQLite_DB->set_sql_mode() #5 /wordpress/wp-includes/class-wpdb.php(772): WP_SQLite_DB->db_connect() #6 /wordpress/wp-content/mu-plugins/sqlite-database-integration/wp-includes/sqlite/class-wp-sqlite-db.php(55): wpdb->< />_construct('', Object(SensitiveParameterValue), 'wordpress', '') #7 /wordpress/wp-content/mu-plugins/sqlite-database-integration/wp-includes/sqlite/db.php(67): WP_SQLite_DB->< />_construct('wordpress') #8 /wordpress/wp-content/db.php(37): require_once('/wordpress/wp-c...') #9 /wordpress/wp-includes/load.php(712): require_once('/wordpress/wp-c...') #10 /wordpress/wp-settings.php(136): require_wp_db() #11 /wordpress/wp-config.php(85): require_once('/wordpress/wp-s...') #12 /wordpress/wp-load.php(50): require_once('/wordpress/wp-c...') #13 /wordpress/wp-admin/admin.php(35): require_once('/wordpress/wp-l...') #14 /wordpress/wp-admin/index.php(10): require_once('/wordpress/wp-a...') #15 {main} Next WP_SQLite_Driver_Exception: SQLSTATE< />HY000< />: General error: 5 database is locked in /wordpress/wp-content/mu-plugins/sqlite-database-integration/wp-includes/database/sqlite/class-wp-pdo-mysql-on-sqlite.php:6991 Stack trace: #0 /wordpress/wp-content/mu-plugins/sqlite-database-integration/wp-includes/database/sqlite/class-wp-pdo-mysql-on-sqlite.php(943): WP_PDO_MySQL_On_SQLite->new_driver_exception('SQLSTATE< />HY000< />...', 'HY000', Object(PDOException)) #1 /wordpress/wp-content/mu-plugins/sqlite-database-integration/wp-includes/database/sqlite/class-wp-sqlite-driver.php(160): WP_PDO_MySQL_On_SQLite->query('SET SESSION sql...', 5) #2 /wordpress/wp-content/mu-plugins/sqlite-database-integration/wp-includes/sqlite/class-wp-sqlite-db.php(128): WP_SQLite_Driver->query('SET SESSION sql...') #3 /wordpress/wp-content/mu-plugins/sqlite-database-integration/wp-includes/sqlite/class-wp-sqlite-db.php(330): WP_SQLite_DB->set_sql_mode() #4 /wordpress/wp-includes/class-wpdb.php(772): WP_SQLite_DB->db_connect() #5 /wordpress/wp-content/mu-plugins/sqlite-database-integration/wp-includes/sqlite/class-wp-sqlite-db.php(55): wpdb->< />_construct('', Object(SensitiveParameterValue), 'wordpress', '') #6 /wordpress/wp-content/mu-plugins/sqlite-database-integration/wp-includes/sqlite/db.php(67): WP_SQLite_DB->< />_construct('wordpress') #7 /wordpress/wp-content/db.php(37): require_once('/wordpress/wp-c...') #8 /wordpress/wp-includes/load.php(712): require_once('/wordpress/wp-c...') #9 /wordpress/wp-settings.php(136): require_wp_db() #10 /wordpress/wp-config.php(85): require_once('/wordpress/wp-s...') #11 /wordpress/wp-load.php(50): require_once('/wordpress/wp-c...') #12 /wordpress/wp-admin/admin.php(35): require_once('/wordpress/wp-l...') #13 /wordpress/wp-admin/index.php(10): require_once('/wordpress/wp-a...') #14 {main} thrown in /wordpress/wp-content/mu-plugins/sqlite-database-integration/wp-includes/database/sqlite/class-wp-pdo-mysql-on-sqlite.php on line 6991
There has been a critical error on this website.

For reference, the production site I refer to in these issues is: https://thepocketnyc.com/

At this point, it looks like I'm going to have to manually clone the site and edit with Local.