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Office & Docs

Spreadsheet Skill

OpenAIApache-2.0Skill language: English
License verifiedIncludes scriptsMedium risk
DemoReal run · claude-sonnet-5-5 · October 2026
Please create an Excel workbook for tracking my monthly household budget. I want one sheet where I enter income and expenses by category for 12 months (January to December), with automatic totals per month and per category, a savings row (income minus expenses), a savings rate row (savings divided by income), sensible number formats, and a highlight on any month where expenses are higher than income. Use sample numbers to start. I'll open it in Excel. Write the Python that builds it and tell me how to check it.
Skill: spreadsheet

I can't run code or write files in this session, so the script below is untested. Run it once and use the checks at the end.

build_budget.py

from openpyxl import Workbook
from openpyxl.formatting.rule import FormulaRule
from openpyxl.styles import Alignment, Border, Font, PatternFill, Side
from openpyxl.utils import get_column_letter

OUT = "household_budget.xlsx"
MONTHS = ["Jan", "Feb", "Mar", "Apr", "May", "Jun",
          "Jul", "Aug", "Sep", "Oct", "Nov", "Dec"]

INCOME = {
    "Salary":       [5200] * 12,
    "Side income":  [300, 250, 400, 350, 300, 200, 0, 300, 350, 250, 300, 200],
    "Other income": [0, 0, 0, 100, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
}
EXPENSES = {
    "Rent / Mortgage": [1800] * 12,
    "Utilities":       [220, 210, 190, 160, 150, 170, 190, 185, 160, 170, 200, 230],
    "Groceries":       [620, 590, 640, 600, 610, 580, 650, 620, 600, 630, 640, 720],
    "Transport":       [180, 170, 190, 200, 210, 220, 260, 200, 190, 185, 180, 200],
    "Insurance":       [250] * 12,
    "Dining out":      [240, 200, 260, 230, 250, 280, 350, 260, 240, 270, 300, 420],
    "Entertainment":   [120, 100, 150, 130, 140, 160, 300, 120, 110, 140, 150, 350],
    "Health":          [60, 40, 80, 50, 45, 60, 70, 300, 50, 60, 40, 90],
    "Subscriptions":   [65] * 12,
    "Other":           [100, 80, 120, 90, 150, 110, 1500, 100, 90, 130, 110, 1400],
}

CURRENCY = '$#,##0;[Red]($#,##0);"-"'
PERCENT = '0.0%;[Red]-0.0%;"-"'

FIRST_COL, LAST_COL, TOTAL_COL = 2, 13, 14          # B..M months, N total
HEADER_FILL = PatternFill("solid", fgColor="1F3864")
SECTION_FILL = PatternFill("solid", fgColor="D9E1F2")
TOTAL_FILL = PatternFill("solid", fgColor="F2F2F2")
FLAG_FILL = PatternFill("solid", bgColor="F8CBAD", fgColor="F8CBAD")
INPUT_FONT = Font(color="0000FF")
BOLD = Font(bold=True)
TOP_BORDER = Border(top=Side(style="thin"))

wb = Workbook()
ws = wb.active
ws.title = "Budget"

ws["A1"] = "Household Budget"
ws["A1"].font = Font(bold=True, size=16)
ws["A2"] = "Blue = enter your numbers. Black = formulas. Months with expenses above income are highlighted."
ws["A2"].font = Font(italic=True, color="595959")

# Header row
HDR = 4
ws.cell(HDR, 1, "Category")
for i, m in enumerate(MONTHS):
    ws.cell(HDR, FIRST_COL + i, m)
ws.cell(HDR, TOTAL_COL, "Year Total")
for c in range(1, TOTAL_COL + 1):
    cell = ws.cell(HDR, c)
    cell.font = Font(bold=True, color="FFFFFF")
    cell.fill = HEADER_FILL
    cell.alignment = Alignment(horizontal="left" if c == 1 else "right")

first, last = get_column_letter(FIRST_COL), get_column_letter(LAST_COL)
tot = get_column_letter(TOTAL_COL)


def section(row, title):
    for c in range(1, TOTAL_COL + 1):
        ws.cell(row, c).fill = SECTION_FILL
    ws.cell(row, 1, title).font = BOLD


def data_rows(start, items):
    r = start
    for name, vals in items.items():
        ws.cell(r, 1, name).alignment = Alignment(indent=1)
        for i, v in enumerate(vals):
            cell = ws.cell(r, FIRST_COL + i, v)
            cell.font = INPUT_FONT
            cell.number_format = CURRENCY
        ws.cell(r, TOTAL_COL, f"=SUM({first}{r}:{last}{r})").number_format = CURRENCY
        ws.cell(r, TOTAL_COL).font = BOLD
        r += 1
    return start, r - 1


def total_row(row, label, a, b):
    ws.cell(row, 1, label)
    for c in range(FIRST_COL, TOTAL_COL + 1):
        L = get_column_letter(c)
        ws.cell(row, c, f"=SUM({L}{a}:{L}{b})").number_format = CURRENCY
    for c in range(1, TOTAL_COL + 1):
        cell = ws.cell(row, c)
        cell.font = BOLD
        cell.fill = TOTAL_FILL
        cell.border = TOP_BORDER


r = HDR + 1
section(r, "INCOME")
inc_a, inc_b = data_rows(r + 1, INCOME)
INC_TOT = inc_b + 1
total_row(INC_TOT, "Total Income", inc_a, inc_b)

r = INC_TOT + 2
section(r, "EXPENSES")
exp_a, exp_b = data_rows(r + 1, EXPENSES)
EXP_TOT = exp_b + 1
total_row(EXP_TOT, "Total Expenses", exp_a, exp_b)

SAV = EXP_TOT + 2
RATE = SAV + 1
ws.cell(SAV, 1, "Savings (Income - Expenses)")
ws.cell(RATE, 1, "Savings Rate (Savings / Income)")
for c in range(FIRST_COL, TOTAL_COL + 1):
    L = get_column_letter(c)
    ws.cell(SAV, c, f"={L}{INC_TOT}-{L}{EXP_TOT}").number_format = CURRENCY
    ws.cell(RATE, c, f"=IF({L}{INC_TOT}=0,0,{L}{SAV}/{L}{INC_TOT})").number_format = PERCENT
for row in (SAV, RATE):
    for c in range(1, TOTAL_COL + 1):
        ws.cell(row, c).font = BOLD
for c in range(1, TOTAL_COL + 1):
    ws.cell(SAV, c).border = TOP_BORDER

# Highlight months where expenses > income (header + summary rows only,
# so the input cells stay clean).
for rng, top in ((f"{first}{HDR}:{last}{HDR}", HDR),
                 (f"{first}{INC_TOT}:{last}{INC_TOT}", INC_TOT),
                 (f"{first}{EXP_TOT}:{last}{EXP_TOT}", EXP_TOT),
                 (f"{first}{SAV}:{last}{RATE}", SAV)):
    ws.conditional_formatting.add(
        rng,
        FormulaRule(formula=[f"{first}${EXP_TOT}>{first}${INC_TOT}"],
                    fill=FLAG_FILL, font=Font(bold=True, color="9C0006")),
    )

ws.column_dimensions["A"].width = 34
for c in range(FIRST_COL, TOTAL_COL + 1):
    ws.column_dimensions[get_column_letter(c)].width = 11
ws.column_dimensions[tot].width = 13
ws.freeze_panes = ws.cell(HDR + 1, FIRST_COL)
ws.sheet_view.showGridLines = False

wb.save(OUT)
print("Saved", OUT)

Run it

python3 -m pip install openpyxl
python3 build_budget.py
open household_budget.xlsx

How to check it

  1. Formulas calculate. Excel calculates on open. If you see blanks or zeros, press Ctrl+Alt+F9 (Cmd+= on Mac). No cell should show #DIV/0! or #NAME?.
  2. Spot-check totals. January income should be $5,500 and January expenses $3,655, so savings are $1,845. That's a 33.5% savings rate. Year Total (column N) should equal the sum of the twelve months, both down the Total rows and across the category rows.
  3. Highlight. The sample data overspends in Jul (income $5,200, expenses $6,435) and Dec (income $5,400, expenses $6,325). Those two columns should turn red in the header and summary rows, and no other months should. Change a Jul input, such as Salary to 9000, and the highlight should disappear.
  4. Formats. Currency shows as $1,234, negatives are red in parentheses, and zeros show as -. Savings rate shows as a percentage, and it goes red when negative.
  5. Optional automated check. If you have LibreOffice, run soffice --headless --convert-to pdf household_budget.xlsx and look at the PDF. You can also recalculate and read the values back with openpyxl.load_workbook(..., data_only=True).

Notes

  • Blue cells are inputs, so overwrite them freely.
  • To add a category, insert a row inside the existing block, between the first and last row of that section. The SUM ranges expand automatically. Inserting after the last row won't extend the total.
  • Savings rate uses IF(income=0, 0, ...) to avoid divide-by-zero errors in empty months.

Real run in an isolated folder with only this skill installed. Only the Skill and Read tools were enabled, so no command was run and no file was written. The scenario is fictional. The model could not run code in this run. The script was run by hand afterwards and builds a valid workbook, and the months that overspend (July and December) are right. However, the July and December expense totals quoted in step 3 are wrong: the script gives 5,435 and 5,525. Check the workbook itself, not the quoted figures.

What it does

Builds and changes .xlsx, .csv and .tsv files with openpyxl and pandas. New workbooks get formulas for every derived value (no hard-coded results), clean headers, number and date formats, readable column widths and an optional color convention (blue inputs, black formulas). Existing workbooks are edited without breaking formulas, references or formatting, and are rendered for a visual check when LibreOffice and Poppler are available. It also covers finance conventions (negative numbers in red parentheses, units in headers, sources in cell comments) and banker-style layouts.

Good to know

openpyxl does not calculate formulas, so values appear when the file is opened in Excel or Sheets. Four runnable openpyxl examples are included.

Good for

Budgets, trackers, reports and models; cleaning and summarizing tabular data; tidying a messy workbook.

Notes & risks

Medium risk: it writes .xlsx and .csv files, may install Python packages (openpyxl, pandas) and optional LibreOffice and Poppler (the Ubuntu instructions use sudo apt-get; macOS uses brew), and tells the AI to delete its own temporary files when done. The bundled examples save over a same-named file without asking, so keep a backup before editing a real workbook. openpyxl does not calculate formulas, so check the numbers in Excel. In the trial the AI could not run code and quoted two wrong totals; the script itself was run by hand and works. This is an earlier revision of OpenAI's skill, which OpenAI later removed from its repository. Apache-2.0, unmodified.