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XL Marinade

Deterministic Excel formula-graph extraction to SQLite — with optional, bring-your-own-key LLM documentation.

Excel workbooks that drive real business decisions (actuarial models, pricing tools, finance workbooks) accumulate thousands of formulas across dozens of sheets, with no audit trail beyond "open it and trace the references by hand." XL Marinade parses a workbook once and writes its entire formula graph — every cell, every cross-sheet reference, every VBA-driven mutation — into a provenance-stamped SQLite database you can query, diff, and document like any other data asset.

What it does

  • Formula graph extraction — every formula cell becomes a node; every reference (same-sheet or cross-sheet) becomes an edge, so you can query "what feeds this cell" or "what does this cell feed" with SQL instead of Ctrl+[.
  • Cross-sheet dependency resolution — references across sheets and named ranges are resolved into the same graph, not left as opaque strings.
  • Canonical formula families — structurally identical formulas repeated down a column or across a block (the common "one row per asset/policy" pattern) are grouped into a single family with a deterministic ID, instead of being treated as thousands of unrelated formulas.
  • VBA edges — macro-driven mutations (e.g. paste-special / .Value = .Value overwrites) are captured as edges in the same graph, so a value that "changes by magic" via a macro is still traceable.
  • Provenance-stamped SQLite output — the output database carries a schema version and per-edge provenance, so downstream tooling can rely on it as a versioned contract rather than reverse-engineering table shapes.

Deterministic core, LLM-optional

extract, diff, and the baseline document output are 100% deterministic and network-free — the same workbook always produces the same graph, and nothing ever leaves your machine. An optional bring-your-own-key LLM tier layers narrative documentation and VBA enrichment on top, and degrades gracefully back to the deterministic output if no key is configured. See LLM add-on.

Where to go next

  • Install — pip install xl-marinade, plus the [llm]/[vba] extras.
  • Quickstart — the extract → document → diff walkthrough.
  • CLI reference — every command, argument, and flag.
  • API reference — the public Python API.
  • LLM add-on — bring-your-own-key narrative documentation and VBA enrichment.