Show HN: Pane – An agent that edits spreadsheets
rbajp Monday, January 12, 2026Hi 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.