diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
index 3e4bce8..0a3d9a6 100644
--- a/.gitignore
+++ b/.gitignore
@@ -3,3 +3,7 @@ __pycache__/
 data/
 *.egg-info/
 .env
+
+# SQLite WAL mode ephemeral files — never track these
+*.db-shm
+*.db-wal
diff --git a/engram.db-shm b/engram.db-shm
deleted file mode 100644
index 936c9ad..0000000
Binary files a/engram.db-shm and /dev/null differ
diff --git a/engram.db-wal b/engram.db-wal
deleted file mode 100644
index 797c2b0..0000000
Binary files a/engram.db-wal and /dev/null differ