gridcraft

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A look around

Why GridCraft

• Familiar. Ribbon, formula bar, Name Box, sheet tabs, keyboard shortcuts, fill handle, point-mode formula entry with coloured references, Format Cells, Paste Special, conditional formatting, tables, charts and more. Everything is right where you expect it.
• Compatible. XLSX is the native format: styles, themes, formulas (including dynamic arrays), tables, conditional formats, validation, comments, hyperlinks, charts, pictures, sparklines, pivot tables and print settings round-trip. CSV and TSV too. Legacy 97-2003 .xls workbooks open with their values, formulas and number formats (formatting and objects not yet). XLSB worksheet data can be imported, using saved values instead of formulas. ODS worksheet data can be imported, using saved values instead of formulas. Static pictures can live inside cells, fitting their size and moving with the data.
• Capable. A dependency-graph calculation engine with dynamic arrays and spilling, 500+ worksheet functions plus LET, LAMBDA, MAP, REDUCE, SCAN, BYROW, BYCOL and MAKEARRAY, structured table references, a comprehensive number-format language, sort and AutoFilter, Flash Fill, data validation, outlining and subtotals.
• Fast. Copy-on-write workbooks (undo snapshots are nearly free), incremental recalculation, and a virtualised grid that only lays out what's on screen.
• Agent-native. Every ribbon button, menu item, dialog, keystroke and mouse gesture is a command that agents can run over a JSON control channel, an MCP server, or the CLI.
• Everywhere. One Rust codebase for desktop and the web. No subscription, no licence server, no telemetry.

Quick start

cargo run --release -p gridcraft                              # desktop app
cargo run --release -p gridcraft -- --sample sales            # open a sample (sales, budget, grades)
cargo run --release -p gridcraft -- book.xlsx                 # open a workbook
cargo run --release -p gridcraft -- --sample sales --control 7979   # + JSON control channel
cargo xtask ci                                                 # fmt, clippy, tests, assets, layering, wasm

Choose Español under View → Interface language for Spanish formula names, decimal commas, and semicolon arguments. Workbooks, clipboard exchange, and programmatic APIs retain canonical English syntax.

Web

cd apps/gridcraft-web && trunk build --release     # → dist/web (serve it with any static server)
cd apps/gridcraft-web && trunk serve --release     # http://127.0.0.1:8771  (?sample=sales opens a sample)

You need trunk and the wasm32-unknown-unknown target. Open uses the browser's file picker (dropping files works too) and Save downloads the workbook.

Ribbon access keys

Press and release left Alt on Windows/Linux/BSD, or press F10 on any platform, then type a sequence below one key at a time. Keytips appear on the supported Home controls and menu items. On macOS, use F10 (Fn+F10 if required by your keyboard); Option remains available for entering accented characters.

Sequence after Alt/F10	Action
H A L / H A C / H A R	Align left / center / right
H V S or legacy E S	Open Paste Special
H O I or legacy O C A	AutoFit selected columns

In Paste Special, T/V/F/C select formats/values/formulas/comments, and E toggles Transpose. Enter applies the selected options; Escape cancels the dialog. These letters also work with Alt held on Windows/Linux/BSD.

Escape backs out one keytip level; Alt/F10 again exits keytips. Clicking, scrolling, or switching windows cancels navigation. Access keys do not start while editing text or using another dialog. This is initial support for these Home and legacy paths; other ribbon commands and full mouse-free navigation remain to be implemented. Browsers or desktop environments may reserve Alt/F10 for their own menus.

Logs

The desktop app writes its log to standard error and to gridcraft.log in the logs folder next to its settings: ~/.config/gridcraft/logs on Linux and BSD ($XDG_CONFIG_HOME/gridcraft/logs when set), ~/Library/Application Support/GridCraft/logs on macOS and %APPDATA%\GridCraft\logs on Windows. Each start moves the previous log to gridcraft.1.log and that one to gridcraft.2.log, so the log of a run that crashed survives the next start; attach them to a bug report. A log file stops growing at 16 MiB. By default GridCraft's own crates log at info and everything else at warn; RUST_LOG replaces that with env_logger-style directives, e.g. RUST_LOG=debug or RUST_LOG=warn,gridcraft_engine=debug (a trailing * matches a prefix: gridcraft*=debug). Runs with GRIDCRAFT_NO_PREFS set (no saved settings) log to standard error only.

For agents: MCP, CLI and the control channel

claude mcp add gridcraft -- gridcraft-cli mcp                 # headless MCP server
gridcraft-cli mcp --connect 7979                               # MCP bridged to a running window
gridcraft-cli eval '=XLOOKUP("b",{"a","b"},{1,2})'             # → 2
gridcraft-cli run --sample budget --cmd 'home.bold={"range":"B4:F4"}' --out budget.xlsx
gridcraft-cli cat budget.xlsx --range B4:F15                   # aligned text table
gridcraft-cli commands --search chart                          # every command and its params

This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗