Vibe Coding a GUI for Miller (mlr, the structured data file processing tool)

TL;DR

I (or AI) made a thing: mlr-desktop is a GUI for the awesome tool Miller (mlr)

Miller is like awk, sed, cut, join, and sort for name-indexed data such as CSV, TSV, and tabular JSON

And it was completely done by an AI agent (vibe coding). Read on for more details, or download the latest release and try it out (available for Mac, Windows and Linux).

Background

One thing we do at snabble is importing large amounts of retail product data from our customers. Think product names and prices.

Ideally, we receive data in the form of JSON, but often we get data from legacy systems that only support CSV export (or worse: some other proprietary text format).

Here's a trivial example of some well-formed CSV:

SKU,Product Name,Price,Barcode

FRO-010,Organic Free-Range Eggs (Dozen),5.99,5012345678901

PNC-025,Fresh Baked Sourdough Loaf,4.25,5023456789012

DRY-050,Basmati Rice (5kg),12.50,5034567890123

PRO-005,Roma Tomatoes (Per…