[janl]

Good observations, let me add the current state to that:

> Querying in a more ad-hoc way (vs. building indexes ahead of time and querying by key, etc) is a bit janky / not 1st class (I think mango addresses this but not entirely sure).

Mango does address this.

> The JS query server engine is/was fairly old

On the one hand, running an old JS engine isn’t big trouble for CouchDB, especially with transpiration tools available, but we now support modern SpiderMonkey up to version 91. The main benefit for CouchDB users is modern JS syntax being available.

> The authorization model is... unique.

per-doc-auth is in the works, no ETA, and the first iteration is going to be limited, but it’ll address the main issues for db-per-user users.