README

Standalone spreadsheet writing tool for agentic document creation.

PHP 8.4+ library for writing valid xlsx files from a JSON-shaped schema. Zero framework dependencies in the core (just ext-zip). An optional Laravel adapter — service provider, facade, artisan command — sits in HolySheet\Laravel\* and only loads when used. No HTTP routes, no controllers, no opinions about how your app exposes the writer; that's your pipeline's job.

Framework-agnostic by design

Layer	What it requires
Core (`HolySheet\Agent`, `HolySheet\HolySheet`, validator, writer, schema)	PHP 8.4+, `ext-zip`. Nothing else. Works in plain PHP scripts, Symfony, Laminas, Slim, CLI tools.
Laravel adapter (`HolySheet\Laravel\*`)	Optional. Auto-registered via `extra.laravel.providers` if Laravel is installed; ignored otherwise. Provides facade, service provider, and `php artisan holy-sheet:write` command.

The package ships no HTTP endpoints. If you need an "Export to xlsx" route, you write the controller — Holy Sheet gives you the writer + facade.

Installation

Spreadsheet reads validate ZIP structure, CRC, names and expansion before XML parsing. Unsafe archives throw HolySheet\Exceptions\ArchiveRefused, whose reason identifies a corrupt, unsupported, duplicate, unsafe-path or size-limit refusal. Defaults are 64 MiB archive/part, 256 MiB total expansion, 16,384 entries and 1000:1 ratio. This bounded input layer does not add a lossless editing API.

composer require particle-academy/holy-sheet

Laravel apps auto-discover the optional adapter. Non-Laravel projects use HolySheet\Agent::* directly.

Quick start

Plain PHP (Symfony, Laminas, CLI, anywhere)

use HolySheet\Agent;

Agent::write([
    'sheets' => [[
        'name' => 'Q4 Sales',
        'columns' => [
            ['header' => 'Region', 'type' => 'string'],
            ['header' => 'Revenue', 'type' => 'currency', 'currency' => 'USD'],
            ['header' => 'YoY', 'type' => 'percent', 'decimals' => 1],
        ],
        'rows' => [
            ['North America', 4_820_000, 0.124],
            ['Europe',        3_210_000, 0.081],
            ['APAC',          2_895_000, 0.227],
        ],
        'totals' => ['Revenue' => 'sum', 'YoY' => 'avg'],
        'theme' => 'default',
    ]],
], '/tmp/q4.xlsx');

Laravel (via the facade)

use HolySheet\Laravel\Facades\HolySheet;

HolySheet::write($schema, $path);   // write to disk
$bytes = HolySheet::toBytes($schema); // raw bytes for streaming/queue jobs
$errors = HolySheet::validate($schema); // dry-run, returns structured errors
$tool = HolySheet::toolDefinition();  // JSON Schema for agent tool wiring

Why this exists

Existing PHP spreadsheet libraries are either:

Heavy and slow (PhpSpreadsheet pulls dozens of transitive deps), or
Tightly coupled to a single output format

Agentic flows need something different: a small, deterministic API where an LLM can describe the sheet as data (rows, columns, types, formats) and the package writes the file in one pass — no per-cell ceremony, no global state, no surprise dependencies.

Features

✅ Multi-sheet workbooks, inline strings, scalar types, formulas with optional cached values
✅ Full styling — bold/italic, text alignment, font color/size, fills, borders
✅ Number formats — currency (USD/EUR/GBP/JPY/CNY/INR/AUD/CAD/CHF/KRW + ISO fallback), percent, date, datetime, integer, decimals
✅ Date conversion — ISO strings + DateTimeInterface → Excel serial numbers
✅ Themes — default, business, minimal, plain
✅ Symbolic totals — 'totals' => ['Revenue' => 'sum'] → SUM/AVG/COUNT/MIN/MAX formulas
✅ Merged cells, column widths (px), frozen rows/cols
✅ Comments with author + color
✅ Cross-sheet formula references (Sheet2!A1)
✅ Style deduplication — every unique format becomes one record
✅ Zero third-party runtime dependencies (uses PHP's built-in ZipArchive)
✅ Structured validation errors with path, expected, got, value, hint
✅ Read path (1.1+) — Agent::describe(path) round-trips an existing xlsx back to a Holy Sheet schema with full feature parity
✅ OpenDocument read (2.2+) — Agent::describe(path) reads an .ods into the SAME schema, chosen by the file's contents rather than its extension, so a caller needs no second library and no branch. Anything else throws UnsupportedFormatException (a RuntimeException). What maps and what does not: docs/ReadPath.md
✅ Document exchange — Agent::read($bytesOrPath) (the sibling-named describe()), Agent::catalog(), Agent::extract($input, 'Q4!A1:D20') to portable content for last-word, fine-print or dark-slide, Agent::fromPortable() and a sheet insert list going the other way, and host-gated Agent::export() to csv / markdown / xlsx (off unless an ExportPolicy allows it). Hidden sheets, rows and columns are skipped and reported; formulas are cached values only. docs/ReadPath.md
✅ Schema repair (1.1+) — Agent::validateAndRepair($schema) applies conservative auto-fixes (singular sheet → sheets, stringified numerics, object-as-list, etc.)
✅ Schema builders (1.1+) — Agent::fromArray(), Agent::fromCsv(), HolySheet::fromQuery() (Laravel) — typed schemas from rows / CSV / Eloquent with no hand-crafting
✅ Formula linter (1.2+) — Agent::lint($schema) evaluates every formula and reports #VALUE! / #REF! / #DIV/0! / #NAME? / #CIRC! errors. Catches the LLM-classic header-row off-by-one (B1*12 when B1 is "Annual" and B2 is the data) with a "Did you mean B2?" hint
✅ =-formula promotion (1.3+) — a bare string cell beginning with = (e.g. '=A2+B2', '=SUM(B2:B10)') is stored as a real formula, not literal text. Use the object form {'value': '=text'} for a genuine leading-= string
✅ dumpJson() (1.3+) — Agent::dumpJson($schema, ?DumpOptions) serializes a schema to JSON (values + formulas). The read-tool counterpart to describe(): describe gives shape, dumpJson gives content. Compaction + a byte ceiling keep agent token cost bounded
✅ Agent toolkit (1.3+) — HolySheet\Toolkit\Toolkit ships the canonical Build / Write / Read / Lint / Describe tools as framework-agnostic descriptors (name + description + JSON-Schema parameters + callable handler) plus a shipped agent prompt. Map them onto any SDK in a few lines (see Agent toolkit)

Excel and LibreOffice templates (.xltx, .ots)

An .xltx is an .xlsx whose workbook part is declared a template; an .ots is an .ods whose mimetype (and manifest root entry) says spreadsheet-template. Agent::describe() reads both exactly as it reads their twins and adds "sourceKind": "template" (also Workbook::$sourceKind from readWorkbook()). A document description has no sourceKind key, as before.

Agent::describe('budget.xltx');            // [..., 'sourceKind' => 'template']
Agent::convertTemplate('budget.xltx');     // .xlsx bytes ('document' | 'template' | null = flip)

vendor/bin/holy-sheet template:convert budget.xltx budget.xlsx
php artisan holy-sheet:template-convert budget.ods budget.ots --to=template

Conversion rewrites only the declaration: the content-type value in [Content_Types].xml, or the ODF mimetype entry plus the manifest's root media-type (ODF 1.3 requires the two to match). Every other member is copied as its original zip record, byte for byte, and mimetype stays first and stored. No reader or writer is in the path.

Refused with HolySheet\Exceptions\OfficeTemplateRefused (a constant reason): macro-enabled templates .xltm (macro_enabled; never read, never converted, and an .xlsm is not converted either), and a package declaring a template of another family or whose parts disagree with its declaration (family_mismatch). Archive guards apply first, so bombs and unsafe names raise ArchiveRefused as for any workbook.

Agent toolkit

Every team building a spreadsheet agent on Holy Sheet hand-writes the same Build / Write / Read / Lint tools and the same validate → lint → repair loop. That layer is shipped — framework-agnostic, zero coupling:

use HolySheet\Toolkit\Toolkit;
use HolySheet\Toolkit\ArraySchemaStore;

$kit = Toolkit::for(new ArraySchemaStore());        // or your own SchemaStore
$system = Toolkit::instructions();                  // the shipped agent prompt

foreach ($kit->tools() as $tool) {
    // $tool->name, $tool->description, $tool->parameters (JSON Schema), $tool->handler
    $sdk->registerTool($tool->name, $tool->description, $tool->parameters, $tool->handler);
}

The host provides three things by implementing SchemaStore (getSchema(), setSchema(), getId()) — where the workbook lives, the agent loop, and the UI. The toolkit provides the tools, the prompts, and the self-correcting write behavior (write_xlsx validates → lints → and only persists when clean; on error it returns the issues so the agent fixes and retries).

Recipe: laravel/ai

laravel/ai consumes the same four fields. Wrap each descriptor in a Tool — no extra package required:

use Laravel\Ai\Tools\Tool;
use HolySheet\Toolkit\Toolkit;

$descriptors = Toolkit::for($store)->byName();

$tools = array_map(
    fn ($d) => Tool::make($d->name)
        ->description($d->description)
        ->schema($d->parameters)
        ->using(fn (array $args) => $d->call($args)),
    $descriptors,
);

return $agent->withInstructions(Toolkit::instructions())->withTools($tools)->stream($prompt);

Versions as diffs

Agent::diff($a, $b) returns the ops that turn one schema into another, and Agent::reduce($schema, $ops) applies them. Keep the current workbook as a real file and each older version as the ops that restore it:

use HolySheet\Agent;

$old = Agent::describe($currentPath);
$ops = Agent::diff($edited, $old);        // store these with the version

Agent::reduce($edited, $ops);             // equals $old
Agent::opSchema();                        // JSON Schema for one op

Exact: reduce($a, diff($a, $b)) equals $b, key order aside.
Small: one changed cell is one set_cell, and an inserted row is one insert_rows plus that row's cells. Rows and columns are aligned by content before cells are compared.
Nothing for no change: schemas that write the same workbook diff to [], so diff($s, describe(<file of toBytes($s)>)) is []. Agent::equivalent() asks that question directly.

set_cell, set_range and set_workbook are fancy-sheets' SheetOp shapes, so stored ops can drive a live useSheetSync session. The other ops cover sheets, rows, columns, merges, widths, frozen panes and meta. Granular ops address sheets in the cell form describe() returns; a sheet authored as columns/rows is replaced whole when it changes.

Compatibility

	Versions
PHP	8.2, 8.3, 8.4
Laravel adapter	10.x, 11.x, 12.x, 13.x (optional)
Frameworks	any PHP 8.4+ project — Symfony, Laminas, Slim, plain PHP, CLI
Runtime deps	none beyond `ext-zip`

Documentation

Topic	Doc
Schema reference — every field, every type, every option	docs/Schema.md
Recipes — 14 end-to-end patterns including round-trip + helper builders	docs/Recipes.md
Read path — `describe()` contract + lossy-fields list	docs/ReadPath.md
Laravel adapter — facade methods, service provider, artisan command	docs/LaravelAdapter.md
Agent skill — system prompt for LLM consumption	skills/holy-sheet.md
JSON Schema — for tool-use validators	skills/holy-sheet.schema.json

Run the demo

php examples/sales-report.php /tmp/sales.xlsx

Writes a 3-sheet workbook (Sales / Notes / Status) demonstrating every feature — currency + percent + date columns, totals row, frozen header, merged title cell, comment, custom theme. See examples/README.md for the full walkthrough.

Three entry points, one schema

Caller	Entry
Plain PHP	`HolySheet\Agent::write($schema, $path)` (static, framework-free)
Laravel facade	`HolySheet\Laravel\Facades\HolySheet::write($schema, $path)`
CLI / agent shell	`php artisan holy-sheet:write --in=schema.json --out=q4.xlsx` (Laravel command)

Need an HTTP route? Build your own controller around the facade — Holy Sheet doesn't ship one. See docs/LaravelAdapter.md for the recommended shape.

Agent guide

Building a workbook with an LLM? agent-guide/professional-workbooks.md (also HolySheet\Agent::guide()) is the guide to give the model alongside the JSON schema: the bar a professional workbook meets, the schema idioms that reach it, and the failures seen in real agent builds. It works with any agent loop.

License

MIT

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