I’ve been building Fuga, a Windows desktop app for repetitive Excel and CSV work.
The basic idea is simple: open a spreadsheet, type what you want done, and the app creates the needed tables, charts, or summaries.
I started working on it because a lot of spreadsheet work is not especially hard, but it is slow to repeat.
Things like:
- grouping rows
- cleaning imported CSV or Excel data
- making summary tables
- creating charts
- checking which rows match a condition
- rebuilding the same analysis across similar files
These are not always “programming problems”, but they often feel like work that should be easier to delegate.
Why a desktop app?
A lot of spreadsheet tools are web-first, but I wanted Fuga to feel closer to working with local files.
The app imports Excel and CSV files, keeps generated results on a canvas, and shows intermediate tables and charts instead of hiding everything inside a chat response.
That part matters to me because AI-generated work can be hard to trust if the result is just a final answer. For spreadsheet work, I want to see what changed.
What the workflow looks like
A typical workflow is:
- Import an Excel or CSV file.
- Ask for a task in plain English.
- Let the app generate tables, charts, or summaries.
- Inspect the generated results.
- Roll back the AI change if needed.
For example, instead of manually building a summary table and chart, you can ask the app to analyze the imported data and create the result directly on the canvas.
Keeping intermediate results visible
One of the design decisions I keep coming back to is visibility.
If the app creates a derived table, that table stays visible. If it creates a chart, the chart stays visible. If it needs intermediate data to answer a question, that can stay visible too.
This makes the workflow feel less like “trust this black box answer” and more like a sequence of spreadsheet operations that can be inspected.
Current state
Fuga currently supports:
- Excel and CSV import
- plain-English spreadsheet tasks
- generated tables and charts
- visible intermediate results
- AI change inspection
- rollback
- a Windows desktop installer
It is still early, and I’m mainly trying to understand which spreadsheet tasks people would actually want to automate.
What I’m looking for
I’d love feedback from people who spend a lot of time working with spreadsheets.
In particular:
- What repetitive spreadsheet tasks do you run into often?
- Would you trust an AI tool more if it showed intermediate tables and charts?
- What would make this kind of workflow useful in a real work setting?
Project link:
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