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
- 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?. - 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.
- 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.
- 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. - Optional automated check. If you have LibreOffice, run
soffice --headless --convert-to pdf household_budget.xlsxand look at the PDF. You can also recalculate and read the values back withopenpyxl.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
SUMranges 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.
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.