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Free Excel alternative that an AI agent can run
GridCraft is a free spreadsheet program written from scratch as a replacement for Microsoft Excel. Every button in it is a command, so an agent in Claude Code can build the table, the formulas and the charts for you.
GridCraft is a free spreadsheet program, and the ArtCraft team writes it from scratch in the Rust language as a replacement for Microsoft Excel. Inside there is everything an Excel user is used to, from the formula bar to PivotTables and charts, and the native file format is the normal .xlsx. By the count of the authors, it covers 89% of the Excel ribbon commands in their catalog and 513 of the 523 Excel worksheet functions. The most important part for us is that every button, menu item and dialog exists as a command. An agent calls these commands through an MCP server, through a command-line tool or through a control channel to the running window. Through MCP the agent reads and writes ranges of cells, evaluates formulas, formats them, inserts charts, creates tables, sorts and filters the data. The program runs on macOS, Windows, Linux and BSD, and also in the browser, without a subscription, without a licence server and without telemetry. It is an alpha, the authors estimate it at about 50% ready for real work, and the fidelity of real-world .xlsx files is the first point in their plans.
Why a vibe-coder should care
In my opinion it is good for the routine that usually takes an evening, for example to put an export of orders into a report, to count the totals, to build a chart and to save the file for the accountant. The agent in Claude Code does this by itself and then checks the result by reading the cells back as text, not by a screenshot. The weak place is named by the authors directly, real .xlsx files are still opened not perfectly and very large workbooks are still in work, so important tables I would keep in real Excel for now.
How to install
Copy this and send it to your agent — Claude Code, Codex, any of them:
Install GridCraft from here: https://github.com/storytold/gridcraft — take the ready build for my system from the Releases page together with the gridcraft-cli command-line tool, connect it to Claude Code with claude mcp add gridcraft -- gridcraft-cli mcp, open the built-in budget sample, add a totals row and a chart, save it as .xlsx and show me the result. Ask me if you need any permissions.
Runs on a regular laptop. Ready installers exist for Mac, Windows and Linux.
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