From a Natural to a Formal Language with DSL Assistant

TL;DR

DSL Assistant leverages GPT-4 to streamline the creation and modification of domain-specific languages through interactive support and automatic error repair, improving usability despite domain-dependent quality.

Contribution

This paper introduces DSL Assistant, a novel tool integrating generative AI for efficient DSL development with multiple interaction modes and error correction features.

Findings

DSL Assistant aids users in creating and modifying DSLs.

The quality of generated DSLs varies by domain and interaction pattern.

The tool demonstrates practical benefits in DSL development workflows.

Abstract

The development of domain-specific languages (DSLs) is a laborious and iterative process that seems to naturally lean to the use of generative artificial intelligence. We design and prototype DSL Assistant, a tool that integrates generative language models to support the development of DSLs. DSL Assistant uses OpenAI's assistant API with GPT-4o to generate DSL grammars and example instances. To reflect real-world use, DSL Assistant supports several different interaction modes for evolving a DSL design, and includes automatic error repair. Our experiments show that DSL Assistant helps users to create and modify DSLs. However, the quality of the generated DSLs depends on the specific domain and the followed interaction patterns.