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Spreadsheet Or Database
🔵 Stable🕐 updated 2026-07-19
🔷 SkillSpec L3
pm-cowork
Decide honestly when a spreadsheet should become a database or app — the five outgrowth signals (concurrent editing, relational strain, permission needs, scale, process-in-comments), what staying costs vs what migrating costs, and the incremental escape paths. Use when asked should this be a database, our spreadsheet is breaking, is it time to move off sheets, or what should replace this monster workbook. Produces the signal assessment on the actual workbook, the stay-vs-move verdict with costs both ways, and the migration path sized to the team.
What to give it
▸The workbook and its job — what process lives in it, who touches it, how often; "the sheet" is usually three processes sharing a file, and they may deserve different verdicts
▸The pain, specifically — overwrites? version forks? broken formulas? permission anxiety? The signals need symptoms, and vague dissatisfaction isn't one
▸The team's build-and-maintain reality — who would create and *keep alive* anything new; a database nobody maintains is a spreadsheet with worse export
▸Scale numbers — rows, editors, update frequency; the strain signals key off real magnitudes
✅ The bar it holds itself to
Every skill in this library self-verifies — these are this skill's own quality checks, straight from its definition.
✓All five signals scored with workbook-specific evidence
✓Both cost columns are filled — neither option rides free
✓A maintenance owner is named for any move verdict
✓Move paths start low-code and single-workflow
✓Multi-process workbooks got per-process verdicts
⚠️ What it refuses to do
Do not prescribe an app for a sheet with 0–1 signals — boring tools that work are underrated
Do not ride 3+ signals on sunk-cost loyalty — the collapse arrives at the worst moment by design
Do not big-bang the migration — one workflow proves the tool; the rest follows evidence
Do not move without a named maintainer — an orphaned database is strictly worse than the sheet
Do not treat scale alone as the verdict — modern sheets scale further than the folklore; the other four signals carry more
Install
npx pm-claude-skills add --agent claude # or codex · cursor · gemini · hermes
# or one-line MCP (every skill, any client):
claude mcp add pm-skills -- npx -y pm-claude-skills-mcpRelated skills
🔌 Embed this skill
Drop this on your blog, docs, or site — it renders a "Run this skill" card:
<div data-pm-skill="spreadsheet-or-database"></div>
<script src="https://mohitagw15856.github.io/pm-claude-skills/embed.js" async></script>💬 Discussion
Spreadsheet Or Database is one of 750 open-source professional AI agent skills — all SkillSpec L3.
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