I'm going back to the file system as a source of truth with static site generators.

The main reason is that I can use a variety of tools to view and manipulate files.

But other software can also mess with your "database", including the operating system itself. For example, Syncthing was breaking my static site by changing the unicode normalisation of file names. MacOS being case insensitive brought issues. Illegal filename characters brought issues.

This approach works well if you want to make data accessible to humans, but it's wildly inefficient if you expect machines to operate on that data, and comes with a few caveats.

Pick the right tool for the job.