gridcraft/ROADMAP.md

SheetCraft roadmap

SheetCraft aims at full Microsoft Excel parity — and to be better: faster, open (XLSX is the native format), fully scriptable by agents (MCP + control channel + CLI), and available on the web.

Status (2026-10-07)

Parity estimate

Measure	Value	Notes
Ribbon/menu command catalog	60% (169 / 281)	cargo xtask parity → docs/parity.md. Home is 97%.
Worksheet functions	~93% (478 + 32 evaluator built-ins of ~545)	Missing: ODDF*/ODDL*, BAHTTEXT, IMAGE, TRANSLATE, COPILOT/PY, STOCKHISTORY, RTD
Feature depth (weighted)	~38%	Pivot tables, Power Query, print/PDF, page layout view, chart formatting depth, ink, macros/scripts, threaded collaboration and solver/analysis tools are the big missing areas

Estimated remaining effort to full parity: ~220 wall-clock hours of Claude Opus 5.5 agent work (≈ 9–10 days running continuously with 3–4 parallel agents), broken down below.

Working today

• Engine: A1/R1C1 formula parser with reference adjustment, dependency-graph recalculation with dynamic arrays (spill + #SPILL!), cycle detection, LET/LAMBDA/MAP/REDUCE/SCAN/BYROW/BYCOL/ MAKEARRAY, structured table references, defined names, INDIRECT/OFFSET/INDEX references, 478 worksheet functions (math, statistics and distributions, text and regex, lookup incl. XLOOKUP/FILTER/SORT/UNIQUE/VSTACK, dates, financial incl. bonds, engineering incl. complex numbers and Bessel, database, information).
• Number formats: Excel's full format-code language (sections, conditions, colours, dates and elapsed time, fractions, scientific, accounting fill), General narrowing to column width.
• Files: XLSX read/write (styles, themes, merges, CF, validation, tables, comments, hyperlinks, charts, pictures, sparklines, print settings, defined names, shared/array/dynamic formulas), CSV/TSV with encoding and delimiter detection, HTML export, JSON.
• Editing: cell entry with type detection and auto-formats, in-cell and formula-bar editing, point mode (click/drag/arrow references), reference colouring, F4 anchor cycling, function autocomplete and argument hints, copy/cut/paste and Paste Special (values, formats, transpose, operations, link, skip blanks), AutoFill series (numbers, dates, months, weekdays, custom lists, text+number), Fill Series, Flash Fill, find/replace with wildcards, Go To / Go To Special, undo/redo with history, format painter.
• Formatting: fonts, fills, all border styles, alignment (wrap, indent, rotation, merge), number formats, 47 cell styles, 60 table styles, conditional formatting (cell rules, text, dates, duplicates, top/bottom, averages, data bars, colour scales, icon sets, formulas), automatic row heights, autofit, hide/unhide, freeze panes.
• Data: sort (multi-level, by colour, custom lists), AutoFilter (values, custom, top 10, average, colour), tables with totals rows, remove duplicates, text to columns, data validation with error alerts, grouping/outline, subtotals.
• Charts: column, bar, line, area, pie, doughnut, scatter, bubble, radar, histogram, waterfall, funnel, treemap, sunburst, box & whisker, stock and combo charts; sparklines.
• UI (egui): Excel-style title bar with Quick Access Toolbar and AutoSave, the full ribbon with galleries (cell styles, table styles, colour palettes, conditional formatting menus), contextual Table/Chart Design tabs, formula bar with Name Box, virtualised grid (smooth scrolling, zoom, frozen panes, text overflow), sheet tabs (rename, reorder, colour, hide), status bar with Sum/Count/Average and zoom, dialogs (Format Cells, Formula Builder, Find and Replace, Sort, Name Manager, Data Validation, Paste Special…), command palette, dark mode.
• Agents: every action is an engine command; JSON control channel in the desktop app (pointer, keyboard, dialogs, screenshots); MCP server (headless or bridged); CLI (info, convert, eval, cat, run, commands, functions, mcp, send).
• Platforms: macOS, Windows, Linux, FreeBSD; web (WASM via trunk). Release workflows for signed/notarized macOS universal DMG, signed Windows x64/x86 MSI + zip, Linux AppImage/deb/rpm/ tar.gz + Flatpak manifest, FreeBSD tarball and a web zip.

Milestones

#	Milestone	Status	Est. hours left
M0	Foundation: core, number formats, formula language, functions, model, calc, XLSX/CSV, engine	✅ done	—
M1	Excel look: chrome, ribbon, formula bar, grid, tabs, status bar, control channel	✅ done (polish continues)	8
M2	Formatting completeness (Format Cells parity, borders drawing, themes fonts/effects, styles authoring)	🟡 most	10
M3	Editing power (drag-move/copy with Alt, insert copied cells, AutoComplete in column, AutoCorrect, spelling)	🟡 most	12
M4	Data (advanced filter, consolidate, what-if: goal seek, scenarios, data tables; Get & Transform lite)	🟡 partial	24
M5	Formulas tab (trace arrows on the grid, watch window, evaluate stepper UI, error-check UI, remaining functions)	🟡 partial	12
M6	Conditional formatting manager parity (rule editor dialog, all icon sets drawn, stop-if-true UI)	🟡 most	6
M7	Charts parity (element selection & Format pane, axes options, trendlines, error bars, chart sheets, styles/colours galleries, PivotCharts)	🟡 partial	28
M8	Insert & Review (icons library of our own, SmartArt-lite, equations, threaded comments pane, show changes, accessibility pane)	🟡 partial	18
M9	Page layout & print (Page Layout and Page Break Preview views, header/footer editor, print to PDF, print preview)	⬜	26
M10	PivotTables (field list, layouts, grouping, calculated fields, slicers, timelines), Solver, Analysis ToolPak	⬜	40
M11	Automation (record actions → replayable scripts, Rhai script editor, form controls)	⬜	14
M12	Performance (1M-row files, parallel recalc, incremental geometry caches), accessibility, i18n	🟡 partial	16
M13	Release & polish (signed builds green on every platform, side-by-side pixel tuning, README screenshots)	🟡 tooling ready	6
	Total		≈ 220

How to measure

• cargo xtask parity — catalog coverage (feature names from Excel's ribbon and menus).
• cargo test --workspace — engine, formula, function, XLSX and UI behaviour.
• cargo run --release -p sheetcraft-ui-egui --example snapshot -- --sample sales out.png — look at the UI offscreen.