I always wish I wouldn’t have to pull in python/pandas to do simple data transformations on smaller local datasets/csv files and stick with sqlite. But then I tend to quickly hit a problem that seems to require dynamic SQL. Anything in between SQL and a general programming language that is made for transforming tabular data?
I’m a bit late, but you should check dbt. It’s a tool that it’s a data framework to perform transformation on a database. It is usually used with data warehouse, but it seems to be compatible with sqlite.