Sheety

Sheety is an Excel-like spreadsheet application for Crystal that compiles spreadsheet definitions (YAML or Excel) into standalone, interactive TUI binaries.

⚠️ Note: This is experimental software. We're compiling spreadsheets into standalone binaries. It's ridiculous, it's probably unnecessary, and it absolutely works.

🌐 Check out the website: sheety.ralsina.me

Features

• Formula Parser: Parses a comprehensive subset of Excel formulas

  • Arithmetic: +, -, *, /, ^
  • Comparison: =, <, >, <=, >=, <>
  • Text: & (concatenation)
  • Logical: IF, AND, OR, NOT, IFS, SWITCH
  • Math & Statistical: SUM, AVERAGE, MIN, MAX, COUNT, COUNTA, MEDIAN, STDEV, STDEV.P, VAR.S, VAR.P, ROUND, ROUNDUP, ROUNDDOWN, CEILING, FLOOR, INT, ABS, POWER, SQRT, MOD, RAND, RANDBETWEEN
  • Text Functions: CONCAT, LEFT, RIGHT, MID, LEN, UPPER, LOWER, TRIM, PROPER, FIND, SEARCH, SUBSTITUTE, TEXT, VALUE, CLEAN, EXACT, REPT
  • Date & Time: TODAY, NOW, YEAR, MONTH, DAY, DATEDIF, EOMONTH
  • Conditional: COUNTIF, SUMIF
  • Lookup: VLOOKUP, HLOOKUP, INDEX
  • Cell references: A1, Sheet2!B5
  • Ranges: A1:B5, Sheet1!A1:A10

• Format Support: Works with multiple spreadsheet formats

  • YAML - Human-readable text format for version control
  • Excel (.xlsx) - Import and export Excel files
  • Convert between any formats

• Hash-Based Build Caching: Content-based caching makes re-running unchanged spreadsheets ~400x faster

  • First run: ~3 seconds (compilation)
  • Cached runs: ~0.007 seconds (instant startup)
  • Automatically recompiles when source content changes

• TUI Interface: Modern terminal UI with spreadsheet-style grid

  • 1000x1000 grid with column headers (A-Z) and row numbers
  • Active cell highlighting
  • Formula bar showing current cell's formula or value
  • Multiple sheet support with Tab switching

• Interactive Editing: Full cell editing with live recalculation

  • Edit value cells by typing
  • Edit formulas with real-time cursor
  • Auto-recalculation of dependent formulas
  • Formula editing triggers automatic binary rebuild

• Mouse Support: Click to select, double-click to edit, wheel scrolling

• State Persistence: Saves and restores UI state

  • Remembers cursor position across sessions
  • Saves all changes back to source file
  • UUID-based state management survives rebuilds

• In-Process Rebuilding: Formula edits rebuild the binary from within the TUI

Installation

Pre-built Static Binaries (Recommended)

Download pre-built static binaries from the GitHub Releases page. No dependencies required - just download and run!

Available platforms:

• Linux AMD64: sheety-static-linux-amd64 (standard x86_64 systems)
• Linux ARM64: sheety-static-linux-arm64 (Raspberry Pi, AWS Graviton, etc.)

# Download and make executable
wget https://github.com/ralsina/sheety/releases/download/v1.2.0/sheety-static-linux-amd64 -O sheety
chmod +x sheety

# Run
./sheety my_sheet.yaml

⚠️ Requirements: sheety itself is a single binary, but working with spreadsheets is not dependency-free. Launching the interactive TUI, editing formulas (each edit recompiles the program), and converting to .cr/.sheety require a Crystal toolchain (crystal + shards) on your PATH and network access on the first run (dependencies are fetched into ~/.local/share/sheety). Converting between .yaml and .xlsx, and viewing an already-compiled spreadsheet binary, need nothing extra.

Build from Source

git clone https://github.com/ralsina/sheety.git
cd sheety
shards install
shards build

Usage

Command Line

# Compile and run a spreadsheet (auto-creates if doesn't exist)
./bin/sheety my_sheet.yaml

# Convert between formats
./bin/sheety data.yaml --save-to=data.xlsx     # YAML to Excel
./bin/sheety data.xlsx --save-to=data.yaml     # Excel to YAML
./bin/sheety data.yaml --save-to=data.cr       # Generate Crystal source
./bin/sheety data.yaml --save-to=data.sheety   # Compile to binary

# Works with Excel files directly
./bin/sheety workbook.xlsx

Spreadsheet YAML Format

Sheet1:
  A1:
    value: 100
  A2:
    value: 200
  A3:
    formula: "=SUM(A1:A2)"
  B1:
    value: "Hello"
  B2:
    formula: "=CONCAT(B1, \" World\")"

Sheet2:
  A1:
    formula: "=Sheet1!A3*2"

TUI Controls

Navigation:

• Arrow keys, Home/End, Page Up/Down
• Tab to switch sheets
• Click to select, double-click to edit

Editing:

• Enter to edit current cell
• S to save spreadsheet
• Q to quit

Value edits live in the recalculation store until you save: the status bar shows [MODIFIED - S to save] while there are unsaved value edits. Quitting without saving discards them (formula edits are auto-saved because they trigger a rebuild).

Limitations

• Named ranges parse but cannot be resolved; formulas using them show #NAME? (the generator warns about this at build time).
• Whole-row ranges (1:10) are not supported; formulas using them produce #VALUE! with a warning. Whole-column ranges (A:B) work and are clamped to the 1000-row grid.
• Shared formulas (Excel's representation for dragged-down formulas) are imported by translating the master formula, but exotic cases may translate imperfectly.
• Error values are approximations: division by zero is #DIV/0!, but most other runtime failures show a generic #ERROR: ... rather than Excel's specific error codes.

Development

# Run tests
crystal spec

# Build
shards build

# Format conversion
./bin/sheety examples/test.yaml --save-to=output.xlsx

Current Status

• ✅ Excel formula parsing
• ✅ YAML and Excel format support with full roundtrip conversion
• ✅ Code generation and compilation to standalone binaries
• ✅ TUI interface with interactive editing
• ✅ In-process rebuilding on formula changes
• ✅ State persistence across rebuilds
• ✅ Auto-creation of new spreadsheets
• ✅ Hash-based build caching

License

MIT

Contributors

• Roberto Alsina - creator and maintainer