I guess I'll bite. How/When do you know you actually need an ORM?

If you're asking yourself "do I need an ORM?", then you should probably default to using one, unless you understand your complete use case well enough to know you'd be better off without one.

It's also important to note that not all ORMs are created equal. Some are more restrictive than others, and that should also be taken into account.

Maybe if you add a new variable to a table and need it in a query five views down? But honestly I much prefer using assisted queries like the supabase package, but leaving the tables alone. ORM can be very unwieldy in an unstable environment.

I’ve once tried a "type-safe" SQL extension and it was pretty neat.

Imho something like this is much more useful than a lot of ORM-overhead.