Show HN: Nobie – an Excel-compatible runtime for agents and humans

A new app called Nobie just rolled onto Hacker News with a bold promise: open Excel files on a Mac, keep everything on your own computer, and make the files behave just like they do in Microsoft Excel. No weird conversion, no sending your data to the cloud, no surprise formatting disasters. For spreadsheet diehards, that’s the kind of pitch that makes people sit up very straight. Founder Matt basically showed up sounding like he was delivering a love letter to Excel, calling it a lifelong obsession born from his banking days, and that deep reverence set the tone immediately.

But of course, the comments didn’t just politely clap. The first mini-drama was the title itself. One commenter bluntly asked why this was being pitched as being for “agents and humans” instead of simply saying it works on Mac. Translation: the crowd smelled trendy artificial intelligence marketing and wasn’t going to let it slide. That little naming jab became the thread’s sharpest eye-roll.

At the same time, the team kept dropping features like party confetti: turn spreadsheets into pictures and PDF files, use a workbook like a mini app that spits out JSON, even compare spreadsheet changes in Git without losing your mind. That helped shift the mood from skepticism to curious excitement. One commenter summed up the calmer camp perfectly: “Very cool.” So yes, there was hype, there was nitpicking, and there was that classic Hacker News energy of people being impressed while also absolutely unable to resist correcting the headline.