Why I built it
I needed a PostgreSQL parser that could run inside Go tooling without CGO, external binaries, or runtime dependencies.
What made PostgreSQL parsing harder than expected
- SQL is not one grammar
- PostgreSQL has a lot of dialect-specific edge cases
- AST shape matters more than “can it parse”
- Error handling becomes a product feature
- Real-world SQL is uglier than examples
Why pure Go mattered
No CGO, easy installation, works in CI, easy to embed in linters and developer tools.
What 200+ GitHub stars taught me
- Developers care about boring installation
- Parser APIs need to be simple
- Good examples matter more than perfect docs
- People want tooling, not academic grammar dumps
Where it’s going
This parser is becoming the foundation for Valk Guard, a local-first static analyzer for SQL and ORM usage. No LLM required. It works from ASTs and deterministic rules.
GitHub repo: GitHub repo: https://github.com/ValkDB/postgresparser