Bebo

Inspiration

Neighborhood projects often begin with observations and plans scattered across spreadsheets. Bebo’s community quick starts are designed to turn verified observations into a project plan, draft accessible updates, or create an Excel action tracker with volunteer roles and public evidence. That focus shaped Bebo: an office agent that can do structured work while keeping its actions visible and reviewable.

What it does

Bebo is an open-source, model-agnostic AI add-in for Microsoft Office, starting with Excel. It can inspect a workbook, then plan and carry out multi-step tasks such as organizing data, updating a tracker, formatting a sheet, creating a chart, and checking the result. It supports OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, DeepSeek, Ollama, and custom OpenAI-compatible providers, so users can bring their own keys or use a local model.

How it was built

The task pane uses TypeScript, Vite, and Lit. An Office.js host connects the agent to Excel, and an in-memory workbook lets the interface and agent loop run in browser development mode. The runtime combines provider integrations, a tool registry, workbook-structure context, permission checks, and checkpoints. A sandboxed JavaScript REPL lets the agent group related workbook operations. Local MCP connections can also link Bebo with WordCraft, GridCraft, and DeckCraft.

Challenges and what we learned

The main design challenge is giving an agent enough workbook context to act accurately while keeping edits understandable and recoverable. Bebo builds a compact workbook blueprint from sheets, headers, tables, named ranges, and the current selection instead of sending whole grids by default. Reads run without prompts; edits ask for permission, structural changes always require confirmation, and each workbook mutation gets a checkpoint with one-click rollback. This project reinforced that useful spreadsheet automation depends on clear permissions, focused context, and a dependable way to review or undo changes.

Built With

• anthropic
• deepseek
• excel
• gemini
• lit
• office.js
• ollama
• openai
• typescript
• vite