excel-author

excel-author is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from aivrar/portable-hermes-agent. It costs 16 tokens per session (2,367 once invoked), scanned A, a copy of excel-author, MIT.

A Python-based tool for creating Excel workbooks that contain financial models. It uses openpyxl, a Python library for reading and writing .xlsx files, and saves the workbook to disk.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to build auditable financial workbooks with assumptions, calculations, linked data, and formulas.
Why use it?
It helps make spreadsheet models easier for another person to review by distinguishing manual inputs, formulas, and links through cell formatting.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Needs its repository: it runs a file that does not travel with it, so clone the repository first. The line is libreoffice --headless --calc --convert-to xlsx ./out/model.xlsx --outdir ./out/.

Good fit Use it to build auditable financial workbooks with assumptions, calculations, linked data, and formulas.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install

Getting it into your agent

It runs from inside its repository, so the clone comes first — what it calls does not travel with the file alone.

Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/aivrar/portable-hermes-agent
agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/aivrar/portable-hermes-agent/excel-author

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for excel-author

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/aivrar/portable-hermes-agent/excel-author/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/aivrar/portable-hermes-agent/excel-author)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/aivrar/portable-hermes-agent/excel-author"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/aivrar/portable-hermes-agent/excel-author/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for excel-author

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/aivrar/portable-hermes-agent/excel-author"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/aivrar/portable-hermes-agent/excel-author.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 16 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,367 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin 100% copy Near-identical to another mod in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00016 $0.02367
Opus 5 $0.00008 $0.01184
Sonnet 5 $0.00003 $0.00473
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00237

Measured 10d ago against content hash f0228fe29411, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

excel-author scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 10d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 1 executable file (scripts/recalc.py), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

Origin

This is a copy

100% identical to excel-author — 0 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

optional-skills/finance/excel-author/SKILL.md · 245 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 245 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

excel-author

Produce an .xlsx file on disk using openpyxl. Follow the banker-grade conventions below so the model is auditable, flexible, and reviewable by someone other than the person who built it.

Adapted from Anthropic's xlsx-author and audit-xls skills in the anthropics/financial-services repo. The MCP / Office-JS / Cowork-specific branches of the originals are dropped — this skill assumes headless Python.

Output contract

  • Write to ./out/<name>.xlsx. Create ./out/ if it does not exist.
  • Return the relative path in your final message so downstream tools can pick it up.
  • One logical model per file. Do not append to an existing workbook unless explicitly asked.

Setup

pip install "openpyxl>=3.0"

Core conventions (non-negotiable)

Blue / black / green cell color

  • Blue (Font(color="0000FF")) — hardcoded input a human entered. Revenue drivers, WACC inputs, terminal growth, market data.
  • Black (default) — formula. Every derived cell is a live Excel formula.
  • Green (Font(color="006100")) — link to another sheet or external file.

A reviewer can then scan the sheet and immediately see what's an assumption vs. what's computed.

Formulas over hardcodes

Every calculation cell MUST be a formula string, never a number computed in Python and pasted as a value.

# WRONG — silent bug waiting to happen
ws["D20"] = revenue_prior_year * (1 + growth)

# CORRECT — flexes when the user changes the assumption
ws["D20"] = "=D19*(1+$B$8)"

The only hardcoded numbers permitted:

  1. Raw historical inputs (actual revenues, reported EBITDA, etc.)
  2. Assumption drivers the user is meant to flex (growth rates, WACC inputs, terminal g)
  3. Current market data (share price, debt balance) — with a cell comment documenting source + date

If you catch yourself computing a value in Python and writing the result, stop.

Named ranges for cross-sheet references

Use named ranges for any figure referenced from another sheet, a deck, or a memo.

Read the full file on GitHub · 245 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 10d ago First seen · 245 lines · 16 tokens per session scan A f0228fe29411

Subscribe to this mod's changes

excel-author is a skill published in the GitHub repository aivrar/portable-hermes-agent (217 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 16 tokens to every session and 2,367 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 100% identical to excel-author, differing in 0 lines, and is treated as a copy.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

document-exports

Generate and TEST downloadable document exports (PDF/CSV) from a Node/Express backend — pdfkit streaming, CSV BOM, cents formatting, and the supertest/pdfkit pitfalls that silently break tests.

pedroiff0/awesome-skills · 44 tokens

comps-analysis

Build comparable company analysis in Excel — operating metrics, valuation multiples, statistical benchmarking vs peer sets. Pairs with excel-author. Use for public-company valuation, IPO pricing, sector benchmarking, or outlier detection.

cyborg-garden/hermes-agent-mt · 46 tokens

officecli-financial-model

Use this skill when the user wants to build a financial model, 3-statement model, DCF valuation, cap table, scenario analysis, or financial projections in Excel. Trigger on: 'financial model', '3-statement model', 'DCF', 'cap table', 'pro forma', 'projections', 'sensitivity analysis', 'waterfall', 'debt schedule'…

CES-Ltd/TitanX · 136 tokens

lbo-model

Build leveraged buyout models in Excel — sources & uses, debt schedule, cash sweep, exit multiple, IRR/MOIC sensitivity. Pairs with excel-author. Use for PE screening, sponsor-case valuation, or illustrative LBO in a pitch.

cyborg-garden/hermes-agent-mt · 55 tokens

excel-author

Build auditable Excel workbooks headless with openpyxl — blue/black/green cell conventions, formulas over hardcodes, named ranges, balance checks, sensitivity tables. Use for financial models, audit outputs, reconciliations.

cyborg-garden/hermes-agent-mt · 50 tokens

dcf-model

Build institutional-quality DCF valuation models in Excel — revenue projections, FCF build, WACC, terminal value, Bear/Base/Bull scenarios, 5x5 sensitivity tables. Pairs with excel-author. Use for intrinsic-value equity analysis.

cyborg-garden/hermes-agent-mt · 53 tokens