Show HN: Sourcetable – AI Spreadsheet and Data Platform

Hi HN! I’m Eoin, founder of Sourcetable (https://sourcetable.com).

Sourcetable is an AI-native spreadsheet that syncs with all your data. Users pair with an AI copilot that helps them do their spreadsheet work, as well as more database-centric analysis and SQL.

Soucetable syncs with databases including Postgres, MySQL, and MongoDB, and over 100+ business applications including Stripe, Zendesk, Hubspot, Quickbooks and Google Analytics. That data is available in a spreadsheet, and any models you build automatically update in near-real-time as new data flows in. The core primitives are AI + spreadsheet + data sync + storage + compute.

If you want to play with Sourcetable today, the easiest way is to upload a CSV and start asking questions.

Who is it for? Sourcetable is for analysts, operators and finance folk doing data-centric work in a spreadsheet. Sourcetable’s spreadsheet-based AI assistant understands workbook range selection and can adjust scope context to the datasets you are working with. You can talk directly to your database and SaaS integrations, which is great for analysis, data search and retrieval, SQL writing & editing (including writing joins across different datasets), and automatic chart creation.

Niching down, if you work in operations at a Spreadsheets are the most used analytical tool on the planet. AI is a platform shift with broad applications. We are staying open-minded about users and use cases since everything is so new.

Backstory: I spent ten years working in de-facto operations and technical roles at startups. Sourcetable draws from that experience of needing better data tooling inside spreadsheets, and constantly hacking ad hoc solutions to fill the gap. Andrew (CTO / co-founder) previously had a deep learning company and was initially drawn to the idea that Sourcetable could be an operating system for the web. We’re both Aussie expats in the Bay Area, which is how we met. Internally, we think of Sourcetable as an application platform, with AI applications being a useful and interesting place to focus.

Features & Use Cases: Talk to your CSV files, spreadsheets, integrations, and datasets using LLMs. AI + data work: Text-to-SQL, search and retrieval from databases, LLM-based data analysis. (This is an entirely different experience to what Copilot/Gemini & Excel/Sheets provide, since they are thin workbooks and not data platforms.) AI + spreadsheet work: formula assist, workbook analysis, data cleaning, chart creation, error handling, summarization, chat, etc. Automated reporting: data is synced, reports you build stay up to date. No-code data access: give the business team safe database access so they will leave you alone! Centralizing data for cross-channel reporting. (e.g. Postgres + Stripe + Mailchimp) Analyzing large CSV files: Sourcetable can handle multi-gigabit files. (Google Sheets can’t handle large data and the experience in Excel is rather cumbersome.)

Technical Details: Sourcetable was built to be fast. It was also built to scale.

AI: LLama 3 (via Groq), Claude, GPT-4o, LiteLLM, custom LLMs

Frontend: DuckDB, React, ShadCN, AntV / Bizcharts, Plotly, CodeMirror, Hookstate

Backend: DuckDB, Python, Cassandra, Redis, NGINX, Cloudflare

Data Eng & Transformations: Fivetran, DBT, Apache Arrow, SQLglot

Distributed Computing & Scaling: Daft, Ray, Cloud Formation

Other: Linux Namespaces, Dill (U.Queensland)

A huge thank you to the open source community, and a special shout-out to DuckDB for being so damn fast. Thank you also to Groq & Anthropic for the rate limit increases in time for this ShowHN post!

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Feedback: Product feedback is welcome! eoin@sourcetable.com

> Niching down, if you work in operations at a I'm already using Retool for these kinds of tasks- what does sourcetable do that I can't already do with Retool?

edit: also, did you build your own spreadsheet engine, or use an off-the-shelf one? (also will it be open source ;P)

Category Comparison (table-based solutions): "How are you different than Retool/Airtable/Coda/Notion/Zapier Tables, etc."

The primary difference vs table-based solutions is that Sourcetable is a spreadsheet in the common sense of the word, similar to Excel and Sheets. We have A1 notation and cell-based referencing. This is what most users expect, and this flexibility/familiarity has a big impact on the breadth of users and use cases within a team.

The formula referencing system of these table-based solutions is usually very limited both to columns/rows (not cells), and is a set of SQL-based queries which are much more limited than that 500+ formulas and functions spreadsheet users commonly expect.

Retool specifically: I tend to think of Retool as a lightweight custom-ERP software system, whereas Sourcetable more like Excel + PowerBI + Data Warehouse, so we will generally be much stronger for reporting and analysis. We definitely have some overlap in potential users since technical operators should like us both. FWIW - Retool is an excellent product.

Hi I'm Andy, Cofounder & CTO @ Sourcetable.

We use a heavily modified licensed engine that prevents us from open sourcing everything (for now). We have plans to open source our agentic/plugin framework, and other parts of the system. We also have a strong ethos of contributing back to open source where we can (contributed back to Arrow, DuckDB etc.).

I'd also add that while everyone knows how to use and work with spreadsheets, we also provide a SQL layer on top that you can use to query data sources as an advanced user (we developed a nomenclature to work within sheets/across sheets/files/our data-warehouse). This allows more technical users to work side-by-side in the same environment as non-technical users without crossing pythonic or reporting boundaries.

On top of this, the AI assistant can answer most of the questions you might have of all this data.

I think as ML gets more sophisticated, we will in general need to be less technical. The "tooling" might even disappear, but we will still need something to communicate important data centric decisions. Whether you like it or not spreadsheets are the foundation of human research and operations and have been for thousands of years, and I feel humanity will need less complicated "tools" and we will keep to our roots.