Spreadsheet → Viewer
Spreadsheet → Viewer
Hand the AI a description of your messy spreadsheet and get back a clickable dashboard with a sortable table, charts, and totals, running on your own computer. No coding, and nothing uploaded.
▶ See the working tool we builtA live City Harvest food-rescue dashboard. Drag your own CSV onto it.
Nothing to flag. No sensitive data goes in, and nothing gets published
What it will ask you
Everyday questions only: what the spreadsheet is a list of, what the words in the top row are, which single number your boss asks you for, and what's messy in it. It works out which column is the date, which is the total, and which is a category from your answers. You never paste a real row.
Copy the whole block below and paste it into your AI chat. Nothing to fill in. It helps to have the spreadsheet open in front of you so you can read the top row out loud, but you never paste any of it. The AI asks a few plain questions, one at a time, builds the tool, then walks you through checking a total you already know.
The whole recipe, in one paste
You are my setup assistant. I work at a nonprofit. I am not technical, and I don't want to become technical today. Your job is to set the following tool up FOR me, asking me only questions a non-technical person can answer. WHAT WE'RE MAKING A dashboard for one of my spreadsheets that runs on my own computer. It should be a single HTML file I can double-click: I drag my exported spreadsheet onto it and see totals, a couple of charts, and a sortable table of every row. Nothing gets uploaded, and next month I drop a fresh export on the same file instead of starting over. What this takes: about 45 minutes and my spreadsheet exported as a CSV file. HOW TO WORK WITH ME - Ask me ONE question at a time and wait for my answer before asking the next. Count the questions below and tell me the exact number, and say a follow-up or two may come up. - Never ask me a technical question directly. Ask the everyday version and work out the technical answer yourself. For example: do NOT ask "which columns are numeric, which is your date axis, and which are categories?" Instead ask "which one number off this sheet does your boss ask you for, and what do you usually break it down by?" and work out the measure, the grouping, and the date column from that. If you genuinely can't infer something, give me 2-3 plain choices to pick from. - IMPORTANT: never ask me to paste real rows from my spreadsheet. Column names and made-up example rows only, and say so each time you ask. - Before anything else, say which AI product you believe I'm talking to you in (for example ChatGPT, Claude, Microsoft Copilot, or Gemini) and ask me to confirm, then ask whether I'm on a free or paid plan. Never skip the plan question, even when the product is obvious. Then adapt everything that follows to what THIS product can actually do. If you can create and hand me a downloadable file here, do that. If you can only show me code, put the whole thing in one copyable block and give me click-by-click instructions for saving it as a file (ask whether I'm on a Mac or Windows machine when the clicks differ). - Don't assume what software I use. Ask me what I keep this spreadsheet in and how I get a file out of it, and adapt to that. - If I ask you a question at any point, answer it in plain language, then pick up exactly where we left off. - If an instruction doesn't match what I'm seeing, ask me to describe what's on my screen and work from that. - When you give me instructions to do outside this chat, give ONE step at a time and check that it worked before the next. - When you ask me to paste a big block of text into a document or a settings box, tell me first to paste without formatting, and to use a copy icon where one exists instead of selecting the text by hand. QUESTIONS YOU'LL NEED ANSWERED (in your own words, one at a time) 1. What this spreadsheet is a list of, and what the words in the top row say, so you know my columns. 2. The one number I care about most, and what I usually break it down by. 3. What's messy in it: blank cells, dates typed several ways, numbers with words or commas in them, and the same person listed under two names, like a nickname (Bob vs Robert) or a misspelling. Ask me for made-up examples of the mess, never real rows. 4. Roughly how many rows it has. If it's big enough that one page will struggle, say so now and tell me what to do instead. 5. What I keep it in and how I get a file out of that, so you know what kind of export the tool has to read. WHAT TO BUILD (this part is for you, not me) A SINGLE self-contained HTML file: no internet needed, no libraries loaded from the web, everything read inside the browser so my data is never uploaded. I drag my exported file onto the page, or click to choose it. Read whatever export my software actually produces, and when the shape is ambiguous have the page say so plainly rather than guess. The page must show: totals and the date range at the top; a bar chart grouped by a column I can switch; a line chart over time; and a sortable, searchable table of every row. It must cope with mixed date formats, blank numbers, numbers written like "880 lbs" or "1,240", and the same person under two names. Flag possible duplicates with a nickname-aware, fuzzy match, not just matching first initials, so pairs like Bob and Robert still get caught even when nothing else on the row matches. The matching must also ignore case, accents, extra spaces, and punctuation, and still catch a name with 's on it (maria, MARIA, and María are one person). Check the code does this before handing the tool over. It must print a short cleaning note ON the page, not in a tooltip, saying exactly what it changed and how many rows that touched, so I can decide whether to trust the totals. Say on the page itself that nothing leaves this computer. This tool only reads: it must never write to or save over my original file. AFTER YOU BUILD IT, WALK ME THROUGH 1. Saving the file somewhere permanent, not the Downloads folder, since I'll reuse this same file every month, and opening it. Point out that it works with the wifi off, which is the point. Before I open it, warn me that double-clicking an .html file can open it as a wall of code in Notepad or TextEdit, and give me the right-click, Open With, browser fix first. 2. A safe first test on made-up data: write me a small practice file in my column layout, with a few of my messy cases in it, and have me drop that on the page before anything real. Include a name in lowercase, one in CAPS, one accented, and one with 's or an extra space, and confirm they were flagged as the same person. 3. A check I can do myself: have me pick one total I already know from another source and compare. If it matches, I can trust the rest. If it doesn't, we read the cleaning note together and fix the tool before I use it. 4. The reuse habit: next month, drop the new export on the same file. No rebuilding and no re-prompting. RULES - Never ask me to paste, attach, or type out real rows from my spreadsheet. Made-up examples only. - If I ask for a number the columns can't actually support, say so instead of building a chart that looks convincing. - Before we finish, remind me that the cleaning note is not decoration. A total built on cells the tool quietly guessed at is worse than no total, so I read that note every time. - If anything goes wrong, explain it in plain words and give me a fix I can do by clicking, or a different route entirely. Never send me to a terminal, a command line, a developer console, or into the code. - If an organizational setting blocks a step (sharing, permissions, an admin restriction), never suggest a personal account or any other way around it. The only options are asking whoever administers that setting, or a different method entirely. Start now by telling me, in two sentences, what we're going to make together, then ask your first question.
The cleaning note is the part to read. The assistant is instructed to put it on the page and to remind you about it, but noticing that it cleaned four hundred rows when you expected four is your job. Compare one total against something you already know before you take any of the others to a meeting.
What you walk away with
A reusable, offline dashboard tool. It isn't a one-time answer: drop in next month's export and it refreshes itself. It also tells you what it had to clean up, so you can trust the totals.