ANTLR Is Powerful — But Sometimes You Don’t Need a Parser Generator

You are building a command interface, not a programming language. Stop paying the architectural tax of a full compiler toolchain. This is part 3 of our ongoing series on safely integrating LLMs with production backends. Before diving in, you might want to read the previous part . ANTLR is a superb tool. If you are building a real language, a compiler front-end, or a complex configuration format, a parser generator is often the right choice. But many teams are not actually building a language. Th