Spreadsheet Manual Build

What it is: a formatted, empty workbook from a field list someone has already confirmed - no dashboards nobody asked for, no invented rows.

Overview

Prepares a spreadsheet or Excel workbook from confirmed business requirements. Use it when the user wants an Excel workbook, a spreadsheet template, an .xlsx file, a manually editable register, an importable table, or a workbook built from another skill's field list.

The workbook is built only from confirmed fields. This is a helper: it defines no table of its own and renders whatever field list the active module already confirmed, so the workbook and the module's CSV cannot disagree.

Layer: n/a. Fits: every stage. Table code: n/a - it renders the active module's table.

When to Use This Skill

• I need an Excel workbook
• give me a spreadsheet template
• I want an .xlsx file
• build me a register I can edit by hand
• make this importable as a table
• build a workbook from the fields we agreed

Also use it when a module has confirmed a field list and the user wants that list as a workbook rather than as DDL or a schema.

Do not use it to decide which fields the business needs. That is the module skill's job, and this one starts from what it confirmed.

How It Works

Follow the shared execution contract. The module-specific rules below define only domain fields, decisions, calculations, and safety constraints.

Step 1 - Identify intent

Read the request and pick the intent before asking anything.

• "a template", "an empty workbook" -> template only. Output: an empty workbook with headers and formatting.
• "with a couple of rows to see the shape" -> workbook with examples, and only when the user asked. The data is obviously fake.
• "the dates are showing as text", "the column is too narrow" -> fix existing workbook. Output: only the structure or formatting that was asked for.
• "how should these fields sit in the sheet" -> mapping only. Output: the column plan, no file.

Never produce more than the intent asked for. A fix does not become a rebuild, and a mapping does not become a file.

Step 2 - Ask only what is missing

Reuse everything already confirmed, including by the module that owns the field list: the workbook purpose, the field names and types, the select options, the date and currency fields, any formula the parent skill defines explicitly, the statuses, and the IDs. Never ask again for information the user has already supplied.

Ask one short question per message, and only when the answer changes the output:

Q: Do you want .xlsx or CSV?

Q: Should this be an empty template or include example rows?

If the answer does not materially change the result, do not ask, and default to:

format: xlsx
example_rows: false

Step 3 - Hold the internal context

Hold the answers in this shape. It stays internal - it is not shown to the user unless they ask, and it never carries a value the user did not give.

module: spreadsheet-manual-build
intent: null            # set in Step 1, one of: template, examples, fix, mapping
source_module: null     # the module whose field list this renders
requested_outputs: []   # xlsx | csv | mapping
example_rows: false
confirmed_facts: []     # only what the user actually said
open_questions: []      # the unanswered ones, in the order worth asking

source_module is the one field this skill needs that a module skill does not have. If it is unknown, ask which database to prepare, because a workbook built from a guess is a rebuild of the guess later.

Step 4 - Recommend the smallest workflow

Build an already requested artifact without asking again. For advice-only requests, give a short recommendation and offer the relevant artifact.

Recommended approach: One sheet, one header row, one column per confirmed field, frozen and filtered. That is a working register on day one.

Why this one: workbooks fail from decoration, not from missing columns. A single filtered sheet gets maintained; a dashboard nobody opens does not, and every extra tab is a second thing to keep in step with the first.

Workflow: Field list confirmed -> Columns and formats set -> Header frozen and filtered -> (rows entered by the user) -> Reviewed

Default to one sheet unless the confirmed workflow requires more. Do not create dashboards, charts, lookup sheets or instruction tabs unless the user asks for them or the

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