Should I vibe code
Manage structured project rows with formulas, forms, automations, and reports
A report is a query that has to re-ask who is looking. Write it once for yourself and it never asks again.
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Their verdict, the Pro price and the build-time estimate come from their entry, MIT-licensed. Checked 2026-08-04.
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Our verdict, the regret score and everything below it. Editorial and unsponsored — nobody can pay to be moved.
The honest answer
why the verdict is what it is
Everybody underestimates the same two things here, and neither is the grid. The first is the formula engine: cross-sheet references, rollups and a dependency graph that has to recalculate in the right order and refuse to loop, which is a compiler with a spreadsheet's face on it. The second is that Smartsheet's real product is who can see which row. Members, Contributors, guests, sheet-level shares, reports that query across sheets, published views handed to a client — that lattice is the reason enterprises buy it, and a report is precisely where a home-built version leaks, because a cross-sheet query written once for an admin does not re-apply the viewer's access on every run. Build it for yourself and it is a very satisfying multi-day project. Build it for a team and the day you add sharing you have moved into the next verdict up, without noticing, in a pull request titled "add reports".
What actually breaks
not "if". the specific failures.
- Reports. A cross-sheet query returns rows from sheets the viewer was never shared on, because the permission check lives in the sheet page and the report went straight to the database
- The formula engine, at the second cross-sheet reference: evaluation order, circular dependency detection, and what a cell shows while its dependency is still recalculating
- Automations that email. A rule on "row changed" plus a bulk import equals four thousand notifications, sent, at once, to real people
- Forms, which are an unauthenticated write endpoint by design. No rate limit, no captcha, and your project sheet is a public suggestion box for anyone with the link
- Row-level sharing, which is not a filter — hiding a column in the UI while the API returns the whole row is the single most common way this leaks
- Attachments and comments, which inherit permissions from a row and are the thing everyone forgets to check when they change the model
- Gantt dependencies and working-day maths, where a two-day task starting Friday and a regional holiday calendar quietly disagree
- Published views handed to a client, which are a URL with no login and no expiry unless you built one
Is that you?
the verdict is a default, not a law
- It is a tracker for you, or for a team where everyone is allowed to see everything and you have written that down
- There are no cross-sheet reports, or reports run through the same permission-filtered query path as the sheet view
- Automations that notify are rate-limited, batched and cannot be triggered by an import
- Forms are behind a login, or behind a token you can revoke, and you have looked at what a bored stranger can post
- Different people are supposed to see different rows, and the difference is implemented anywhere in the front end
- External guests get a link to a published view containing anything you would not print on a poster
- The sheet holds compensation, vendor rates, candidate names or anything else where the wrong reader is the whole incident
- A team has started running deliveries on it and there is no export, no backup restore you have tested, and one person who understands the schema
If you build it anyway
the checklist, then the prompt that enforces it
- Decide the permission model before the grid renders. Rows carry an owner and a visibility, every query is filtered by the requesting user server-side, and there is exactly one code path that reads rows.
- Make reports use that same path. If a report needs its own query, it needs its own permission test, and the test belongs in the code, not in the review.
- Never hide data in the client. If a column is restricted, it does not leave the server — check the API response, not the screen.
- Cap and batch every automation: a maximum number of notifications per rule per hour, suppression during bulk import, and a dry-run mode that prints who would have been emailed.
- Treat form endpoints as public internet. Rate-limit by IP, add a spam control, validate every field server-side, and cap attachment size and type.
- Give published links an expiry and a revoke button on day one. A share URL with no expiry is a permanent grant to whoever forwarded it.
- Build the audit log early: who changed which cell, when, and what it was before. Recovering a sheet somebody sorted badly is the most common real incident in this category.
- Version the formula engine's behaviour with tests. Recalculation order bugs do not throw, they produce a number that is merely wrong.
I am building a project tracker with sheets, formulas, forms, automations and
reports for a small team. The part that will hurt is not the grid, it is who can
see which row. Do this in order and push back if I ask to defer any of it.
1. Model permissions before any UI. Every row belongs to a sheet, every sheet
has an explicit share list with roles, and every read goes through one
server-side function that takes the requesting user. Write it first.
2. Reports are cross-sheet queries and must use that same function. If you find
yourself writing a second query path, stop and tell me why — that is where
this leaks.
3. Never rely on the client to hide anything. Restricted columns must be absent
from the API response. Test by fetching a row as an unauthorised user and
asserting the response body, not the rendering.
4. Build export and a tested restore before import or bulk edit: a CSV per sheet
plus attachments, runnable from cron.
5. Add an append-only audit log of cell changes (actor, timestamp, prior value)
and a point-in-time restore. Sort-and-save is the incident that happens.
6. Automations come last, and they arrive rate-limited: a cap per rule per hour,
automatic suppression during imports and migrations, and a dry-run that
prints the recipient list without sending. Sent email cannot be recalled.
7. Public forms are hostile input. Server-side validation of every field, rate
limiting by IP, a spam control, size and MIME limits on attachments, and no
unescaped reflection of submissions into any admin page.
8. Published or shared views require an expiring token I can revoke, plus a page
listing every live share and who created it.
9. For formulas, start with single-sheet arithmetic, detect circular references
explicitly, and define evaluation order in writing before adding cross-sheet
references.
10. Out of scope until asked: Gantt dependency scheduling with working
calendars, resource management and guest portals. If I want external people
seeing subsets of rows, tell me that is a different, more dangerous product.That one keeps you out of trouble. For the prompt that actually builds it, canivibecodeit.com has one.
their build prompt ↗Or don’t build it
the boring option, and the way back out
The moment two people are supposed to see different things. $12 per member per month is buying a permission lattice that has been attacked, audited and argued about for twenty years, plus a formula engine and an automation runtime you would otherwise own forever. And note the shape of their pricing: Contributors are free. If your real need is a handful of editors and a lot of viewers, the paid version is far cheaper than the comparison you did in your head.
$12/mo is cheaper than your weekend.
Sheets are tables, so the exit is genuinely available if you keep it that way: a CSV per sheet with a stable column order, attachments in a folder keyed by row ID, and a JSON sidecar holding the share lists and automation rules. Anything can import that. What does not travel is the interesting part — formulas become their last computed values, cross-sheet references become nothing, and automations become a document describing what used to happen. Write the export while the schema is small, run it on a schedule, and open the CSVs occasionally, because the export nobody has read is the one that has been writing empty files since March.
Actively developed open-source spreadsheet interface over a real database, with views, forms and shared links.
Open-source spreadsheet-database with a real formula language and granular access rules — the closest thing to a reference implementation of row-level permissions.
Questions
Why is this DEMO ONLY when Softr, which is easier, is YOUR FUNERAL?
Because of who is on the other side of the login. A Smartsheet clone is usually built for a team that already trusts each other, where the worst case is a colleague seeing a salary column early — bad, survivable, internal. A Softr-style portal is built to show external customers their own data, so the same authorisation bug becomes one client reading another client's records. Same class of mistake, very different bill.
Is the formula engine really that hard?
The arithmetic is not. The graph is. You need to know which cells depend on which, evaluate in topological order, detect cycles rather than hang, and decide what a cell displays while its inputs are stale. Cross-sheet references turn that graph into a distributed one. It is a genuinely interesting project and it is not a weekend, and the failure mode is a plausible-looking wrong number rather than an exception.
What is the safe subset worth building?
A single-sheet tracker with typed columns, filters, saved views and a good keyboard experience, where everyone in the workspace can see everything. That covers most of what small teams actually use, it has no permission model to get wrong, and you can add an audit log and an export in an afternoon. Stop before reports and before external sharing.
Every week, someone ships something they shouldn’t have.
New verdicts, the worst thing that landed in the trap, and the occasional incident report. No other email, ever.
Project management tools are easy to build and impossible to get a team to adopt.
Configurable boards for one team is achievable. Configurable boards for any team is a platform.
Tasks, docs, goals, dashboards and automations. That is five products and you want all five.
last reviewed 2026-08-04 · verdict is editorial and unsponsored · shared entry data from canivibecodeit under MIT · not legal advice