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Show HN: Pane – An agent that edits spreadsheets (https://paneapp.com)

32 points by rbajp 5 days ago | 10 comments | View on ycombinator

mattmm11 4 days ago |

Yesterday I was trying to have Gemini help put together a toy model to calculate some financial scenarios in Sheets, and it struggled mightily. The biggest challenge was it didn't have a good way to port formulas over into specific cells, so I basically had a CSV and a bullet list of formulas to put in by hand. From the demo I couldn't tell how well this use case would be handled, but I imagine better in what you've built (will try it out to test it!). I did not try Gemini in sheets, for the record, which may work better than from the chat environment.

I'd echo other comments on the demo being a bit hard to follow, and it'd be useful to be able to demo without having to create an account/sign up, encouraging exploration.

rubenflamshep 5 days ago |

I fell out of the funnel during the demo. Not sure if there was a browser issue but the video had no sound and watching spreadsheet navigation with no context left me completely lost as to what was happening.

ashwindharne 5 days ago |

I'm building something similar, but as an Excel add-in instead of a standalone product.

In real use-cases, it seems that by far the hardest part is figuring out the right representation for a spreadsheet workbook and the right primitives for the agent to be able to navigate it adeptly and cost-effectively; structure is incredibly variable and the data just compresses rather poorly (values, formulas, formatting, charts, pivots, etc.).

Great stuff though, think we'll see a lot of movement in the space in the coming years!

smallerfish 5 days ago |

What's your experience with the competition? I have never tried gemini in sheets, but don't you think google will get there soon if they're not already?

SkyPuncher 5 days ago |

How do you handle documents with Macros?

tjchear 5 days ago |

iirc there was a startup doing the same thing called sourcetable? How does pane compare to it?