Nobie
an Excel-compatible runtime for agents and humans
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HN · launched Jul 13, 2026 · 96 upvotes (top 9%) · 0 views
Niche: spreadsheet tools and extensions · 138 launches, 6 in the last 7 days ▼ -67% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Horizontal
- Agent / copilot
- B2B
- AI-native
- Commercial product
Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗
More like this: all 138 launches in spreadsheet tools and extensions →
Could you build this?
No Building a truly Excel-compatible calculation runtime requires reverse-engineering hundreds of obscure Excel formula semantics, dynamic array behaviors, dependency graph evaluation, and numerical edge cases.
What it would actually take: Building an Excel engine requires implementing a directed acyclic graph (DAG) topological sort engine with dirty-marking and cycle detection, parser combinators for Excel formula syntax, and exact floating-point/type-coercion compatibility across hundreds of built-in functions. Typically implemented in Rust or C++ with WebAssembly compilation, it requires deep compiler design and spreadsheet specification expertise.
Discussion
20 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: Excel, Other spreadsheet platforms (commenters mention their own projects)
Concerns raised: Custom DLL loading and platform-dependent functions not supported, Pivot table creation/editing not yet available, Chart creation/editing not yet available, Windows version not yet launched, Table references not fully discoverable in UI
Feature requests: Auto-create named ranges for tables (like Excel's default behavior), Autocomplete suggestions for named ranges in formulas, Cell name box should display range selections and table references, Table column selection with cursor transformation on header hover, Make all spreadsheet features programmable (formatting, cell scripts, etc)
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 4984 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #421 of 4985 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 257 days after the earliest competitor.
- ObsessionDB: a real-time data warehouse built for agents · yc · 2026-10-20 · 25 upvotes · similarity 0.70
- 514 · hn · 2026-08-07 · 10 upvotes · similarity 0.67
- widefleet · github · 2026-10-09 · 42 upvotes · similarity 0.67
- Mantyx · hn · 2026-03-26 · 11 upvotes · similarity 0.67
- Mu · hn · 2026-08-02 · 52 upvotes · similarity 0.66
- ouro · github · 2026-10-07 · 19 upvotes · similarity 0.66
- Nerve · hn · 2026-05-25 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.66
- Agweb · hn · 2026-11-14 · 50 upvotes · similarity 0.65
The niche, labels, vibe code rating and competitor comparison on this page are analysis by Nicheloom. If you use them, please credit nicheloom.com. How you may use our data.