Building a DuckDB transpiler so SQL works across engines

Cocoa Lemana is shipping a transpiler that translates SQL written for DuckDB so it runs on BigQuery, Postgres, and others. DuckDB is a fast in-process engine — no server, no cluster — and its syntax has drifted from standard SQL. When you write a query in DuckDB and need it to run on a different database, the transpiler rewrites it so the target engine understands it.

The problem it solves is real. Data teams juggle multiple engines all the time — analytics in BigQuery, transactional data in Postgres, a local DuckDB for prototyping. Every switch means rewriting queries. The transpiler keeps the authoring in one dialect and lets the execution happen wherever it needs to. It's the kind of tool you quietly install when a PR starts failing on a different database and you don't want to rewrite the whole thing.

Why this matters for us: data work is moving toward smaller, faster tools that fit on a laptop — and this kind of transpiler lets us use them without getting locked into one engine.