cell is a Rust TUI spreadsheet with full Vim modal keybindings, CSV/TSV/native format support, and Excel-compatible formulas.
Key Takeaways
Install via cargo install cell-sheet-tui or grab pre-built binaries for Linux, macOS, and Windows from GitHub Releases.
Supports normal/insert/visual/command modes; navigation (gg, G, 0, $, Ctrl-D/U/F/B), row ops (dd, yy, p/P), undo/redo, and / search are all Vim-native.
Formula engine supports SUM, AVERAGE, COUNT, MIN, MAX, IF with ODF spec compliance as a stated roadmap goal; formulas use = prefix with Excel-compatible syntax.
Architecture splits cell-sheet-core (data model, formula engine, file I/O) from cell-sheet-tui (Ratatui rendering, event loop), making the core testable without a terminal.
Native .cell format preserves formulas as plain text; CSV export flattens formulas with a warning, requiring :w! to force.
Hacker News Comment Review
The one technical commenter called the Vim modal model “almost native for spreadsheets” and flagged recalculation, dependency tracking, and undo/redo under load as the open engineering questions worth watching.
No discussion yet on formula compliance edge cases, large CSV performance, or Windows TUI rendering – all areas where sc-im (the stated inspiration) has known rough edges.
