LLMs as Parsers, Not Calculators

Apartment hunting means comparing rentals with different fee structures, periods, and VAT rules. The math is simple, but normalizing the inputs is a cognitive nightmare. This episode explores why the right architecture isn't a chatbot — it's a pipeline where an LLM extracts structured data from messy natural language, and deterministic code handles all arithmetic. We walk through function calling, prompt engineering for edge cases, and how MCP connections can save results to spreadsheets. A practical pattern for any comparison problem involving messy inputs.