alt Hacker NewsShow HN: Pane – An agent that edits spreadsheets
Hi HN,
I built Pane, a spreadsheet-native agent that operates directly on the grid (cells, formulas, references, ranges) instead of treating spreadsheets as text.
Most spreadsheet AI tools fail because they: - hallucinate formulas - lose context across edits - can't reliably modify existing models
Pane runs inside the spreadsheet environment and uses the same primitives a human would: selecting cells, editing formulas, inserting ranges, reconciling tables.
I launched it on Product Hunt this weekend and it unexpectedly resonated, which made me curious whether this approach actually holds up under scrutiny.
I'd love feedback on: - obvious failure modes you expect - whether this is fundamentally better than scripts + formulas + copilots
Happy to answer technical questions.
Comments
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!
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?
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.