Add README

Author: jkurdek

README

@@ -0,0 +1,41 @@
+# Sparser: High-Performance JSON Querying
+
+## Overview
+
+Sparser is an optimized JSON querying framework that minimizes full JSON parsing using cascade filtering. It efficiently processes newline-delimited JSON (NDJSON) records with substring filtering before detailed evaluation.
+
+Original repository: [Sparser GitHub](https://github.com/stanford-futuredata/sparser)  
+Research paper: [VLDB 2018](https://www.vldb.org/pvldb/vol11/p1576-palkar.pdf)
+
+## Build Instructions
+
+### Dependencies (vcpkg)
+
+The project uses `vcpkg` for dependency management.
+
+### Configure with CMake Presets
+
+```sh
+cmake --preset <preset>
+```
+
+### Build
+
+```sh
+cmake --build build
+```
+
+### Run
+
+```sh
+./build/SparserMain <input_file>
+```
+
+## Testing
+
+To run tests:
+
+```sh
+cmake --build build --target test
+ctest --test-dir build --output-on-failure
+```