gridcraft: Build Spreadsheets in Pure Rust

Overview

GridCraft is a clean-room, high-performance spreadsheet application built in pure Rust. It brings familiar spreadsheet workflows to macOS, Windows, Linux, BSD and the browser via WebAssembly, with XLSX as its native format and CSV and TSV support. The project is part of the ArtCraft team’s Crafting Apps.

It is designed for people who want a desktop or web spreadsheet they can use directly, as well as developers and agents that need to create, inspect or edit workbooks through a CLI, MCP server or JSON control channel. The project describes itself as alpha, so it is not yet a drop-in replacement for mature spreadsheet software in every workflow.

Key Features

• Spreadsheet interface with a ribbon, formula bar, sheet tabs, keyboard shortcuts and dark mode.
• Calculation engine with a dependency graph, dynamic arrays, structured table references and a broad worksheet function library.
• XLSX import and export, including round-tripping for many workbook features; CSV and TSV support, plus data import from XLSB and ODS.
• Tables, conditional formatting, sorting, AutoFilter, pivot tables, charts, sparklines and print and PDF workflows.
• Native desktop builds and a WebAssembly version, sharing one Rust codebase.
• Agent access through a headless MCP server, gridcraft-cli and the desktop app’s JSON control channel.
• Copy-on-write workbook snapshots and a virtualized grid, intended to support efficient editing and rendering.

Use Cases

• Spreadsheet users who want to try an open-source, cross-platform alternative for budgets, gradebooks, sales reports or other everyday workbooks.
• Teams that need to inspect or transform workbook data from scripts, or expose spreadsheet operations to an agent through MCP or the CLI.
• Developers evaluating a Rust spreadsheet engine and UI architecture that separates the egui frontend from the workbook engine.
• Users who need to open or save XLSX files while checking compatibility with their particular workbook features before relying on it for production work.

Getting Started

Run the desktop app from the repository with Rust installed:

cargo run --release -p gridcraft

See the README for sample workbooks, web builds, agent interfaces and platform-specific downloads.

Considerations

• The project identifies itself as alpha. Its roadmap says depth, fidelity and file compatibility remain rough, and estimates readiness for real work at about half. Its ribbon-command and function parity inventories are not counts of working implementations.
• XLSX support is extensive, but legacy .xls import is limited to values, formulas and number formats; formatting and objects are not yet supported. XLSB and ODS imports use saved values rather than formulas.
• The README calls out XLSX fidelity on real-world files, very large workbooks, multi-threaded recalculation and chart depth as ongoing work.
• The project is moving quickly: the supplied health data reports recent commits and releases, with work and issue activity across at least 100 contributors and no concentration warning. Activity does not remove the compatibility and maturity risks of alpha software.
• The README states the code is dual-licensed under MIT or Apache-2.0. Bundled assets have their own licenses, and ArtCraft branding is subject to separate restrictions; check the repository notices before redistributing a modified build.