Sheets Terminal Spreadsheet Skill by ara.so — Daily 2026 Skills collection. Sheets is a terminal-based spreadsheet TUI (Terminal User Interface) for viewing and editing CSV files directly in your terminal. It features vim-style navigation, formula support, visual selection, search, undo/redo, and a command mode — all without leaving the terminal. Installation Using Go go install github.com/maaslalani/sheets@main Download Binary Download a prebuilt binary from GitHub Releases . Verify Installation sheets --help CLI Usage Launch the TUI sheets budget.csv Read from stdin sheets <<< "ID,Name,Age 1,Alice,24 2,Bob,32 3,Charlie,26" Or pipe from another command: cat data.csv | sheets Read a Specific Cell sheets budget.csv B9

Output: 2760

Read a Cell Range sheets budget.csv B1:B3

Output:

1200

950

810

Modify Cells (Non-Interactive)

Set one cell

sheets budget.csv B7 = 10

Set multiple cells

sheets budget.csv B7 = 10 B8 = 20 Navigation Keybindings Basic Movement Key Action h , j , k , l Move left, down, up, right gg Jump to top G Jump to bottom 5G Jump to row 5 gB9 Jump to cell B9 0 Jump to first column ^ Jump to first non-empty column in row $ Jump to last non-empty column in row H / M / L Jump to top / middle / bottom visible row ctrl+u / ctrl+d Move half page up / down View Alignment Key Action zt Align current row to top of window zz Align current row to middle of window zb Align current row to bottom of window Search Key Action / Search forward ? Search backward n Repeat last search (forward) N Repeat last search (backward) Marks & Jump List Key Action ma Set mark a at current cell 'a Jump to mark a ctrl+o Move backward through jump list ctrl+i Move forward through jump list Editing Keybindings Insert Mode Key Action i Edit current cell I Edit from start of cell c Clear cell and start editing ESC Leave insert / visual / command mode enter Commit and move down tab Commit and move right shift+tab Commit and move left ctrl+n Commit and move down ctrl+p Commit and move up Row Operations Key Action o Insert row below and start editing O Insert row above and start editing dd Delete current row Copy / Cut / Paste Key Action y Yank (copy) current cell yy Yank current row(s) x Cut current cell or selection p Paste current register Undo / Redo Key Action u Undo ctrl+r Redo U Undo all changes . Repeat last change Visual Mode Enter visual mode with v (cell selection) or V (row selection). Key Action v Start visual cell selection V Start visual row selection = Insert formula after selected range (e.g., =|(B1:B8) ) Command Mode Press : to open the command prompt. Command Action :w Save file :w path.csv Save to a new file :e path.csv Open another CSV file :q Quit :wq Save and quit :goto B9 Jump to cell B9 :B9 Jump to cell B9 (shorthand) Common Patterns Create a New CSV and Edit It

Create a CSV with headers

echo "Name,Amount,Category"

budget.csv sheets budget.csv Pipe CSV Data and Edit

Generate CSV from a database query and edit in sheets

psql -c "COPY (SELECT * FROM sales) TO STDOUT WITH CSV HEADER" | sheets Script: Update a Cell Programmatically

!/bin/bash

Update Q4 value in financial report

sheets report.csv D4 = 95000 D5 = 102000 D6 = 88000 echo "Updated Q4 values in report.csv" Script: Extract a Range for Processing

!/bin/bash

Extract column B rows 1-10 and sum them in bash

values

$( sheets data.csv B1:B10 ) total = 0 while IFS = read -r line ; do total = $(( total + line )) done <<< " $values " echo "Total: $total " Script: Read a Specific Cell in a Shell Script

!/bin/bash

Get current budget total from spreadsheet

budget_total

$( sheets budget.csv C15 ) if [ " $budget_total " -gt 10000 ] ; then echo "Budget exceeded!" fi Go Integration Example If building a Go application that generates CSV for use with sheets: package main import ( "encoding/csv" "fmt" "os" "os/exec" ) func createAndOpenSpreadsheet ( data [ ] [ ] string , filename string ) error { // Write CSV data f , err := os . Create ( filename ) if err != nil { return fmt . Errorf ( "creating file: %w" , err ) } defer f . Close ( ) w := csv . NewWriter ( f ) if err := w . WriteAll ( data ) ; err != nil { return fmt . Errorf ( "writing CSV: %w" , err ) } w . Flush ( ) // Open in sheets TUI cmd := exec . Command ( "sheets" , filename ) cmd . Stdin = os . Stdin cmd . Stdout = os . Stdout cmd . Stderr = os . Stderr return cmd . Run ( ) } func main ( ) { data := [ ] [ ] string { { "Month" , "Revenue" , "Expenses" , "Profit" } , { "January" , "12000" , "8500" , "3500" } , { "February" , "13500" , "9200" , "4300" } , { "March" , "11800" , "8900" , "2900" } , } if err := createAndOpenSpreadsheet ( data , "monthly_report.csv" ) ; err != nil { fmt . Fprintf ( os . Stderr , "Error: %v\n" , err ) os . Exit ( 1 ) } } Go: Read a Cell Non-Interactively package main import ( "fmt" "os/exec" "strings" ) func readCell ( csvFile , cell string ) ( string , error ) { out , err := exec . Command ( "sheets" , csvFile , cell ) . Output ( ) if err != nil { return "" , fmt . Errorf ( "reading cell %s: %w" , cell , err ) } return strings . TrimSpace ( string ( out ) ) , nil } func readRange ( csvFile , cellRange string ) ( [ ] string , error ) { out , err := exec . Command ( "sheets" , csvFile , cellRange ) . Output ( ) if err != nil { return nil , fmt . Errorf ( "reading range %s: %w" , cellRange , err ) } lines := strings . Split ( strings . TrimSpace ( string ( out ) ) , "\n" ) return lines , nil } func main ( ) { total , err := readCell ( "budget.csv" , "B9" ) if err != nil { fmt . Println ( "Error:" , err ) return } fmt . Println ( "Budget total:" , total ) values , err := readRange ( "budget.csv" , "B1:B6" ) if err != nil { fmt . Println ( "Error:" , err ) return } fmt . Println ( "Monthly values:" , values ) } Tips for AI Agents Suggesting Sheets for CSV Tasks When a user wants to view or edit CSV files in the terminal, suggest sheets:

Instead of cat data.csv

sheets data.csv

Instead of awk/sed edits for simple changes

sheets data.csv B3 = new_value Formula Insertion Workflow Navigate to the column where you want the formula Enter visual mode with v Select the range (e.g., B1:B8) Press = to insert formula after the selection: =|(B1:B8) Efficient Navigation (Vim Users) Sheets uses vim-style navigation — users familiar with vim can be productive immediately: gg / G for top/bottom hjkl for movement i / c for insert modes dd to delete rows u / ctrl+r for undo/redo / for search Troubleshooting sheets command not found

Ensure Go bin directory is in PATH

export PATH = $PATH : $( go env GOPATH ) /bin

Or install again and verify

go install github.com/maaslalani/sheets@main which sheets File Not Saved After Editing Use :w in command mode to save, or :wq to save and quit. Just pressing q or ctrl+c quits without saving . TUI Rendering Issues Sheets relies on terminal capabilities. If the display looks broken: Ensure your terminal supports 256 colors or truecolor Try a different terminal emulator (iTerm2, Alacritty, Ghostty, WezTerm) Check TERM environment variable: echo $TERM Reading Non-CSV Files Sheets is designed for CSV format. Convert other formats first:

Excel to CSV (using Python)

python3 -c "import pandas as pd; pd.read_excel('data.xlsx').to_csv('data.csv', index=False)" sheets data.csv Large Files Performance For very large CSV files, navigate directly to specific cells rather than scrolling: :goto A1000 or press 5G to jump to row 5 directly.