Spreadsheet Agent Allowlists Are Not Acceptance Tests — Define What Must Stay Unchanged
Competitive-Mud7832 · reddit · 2026-10-17
"Only update the forecast inputs" is useful but incomplete as an acceptance test: an agent can overwrite a formula with a constant, repoint a chart's source, or edit a neighboring assumption, leaving plausible-looking totals on a harder-to-maintain model. The post lays out a contract-first harness: specify which cells may change (value/formula/formatting), which formulas, named ranges, and chart sources must stay untouched, and which totals must hold after recalculation. Tools like Univer CLI — an agent-facing spreadsheet app whose range reads distinguish stored values, types, formulas, and display text, with worktree comparisons and structured diffs — supply inspection primitives, not built-in audits. Also: explicitly trigger recalculation and wait before reading values, and treat idempotency (running the same update twice must not append a second adjustment) as a workflow invariant a successful command doesn't establish.
Related event: Whitelists Alone Aren't Enough for AI Spreadsheet Agents(2 posts)→
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