14. August 2025
Teaching our MCP server some new tricks
Things move fast in the world of LLMs. At the beginning of the year, when I first wrote about the Model Context Protocol (MCP), it was fairly niche. Since then it’s been expanded from Anthropic’s original ideas and endorsed by other big players in the field. MCP has become a universal plugin system for LLMs.
In January we released the first version of our MCP server for GRID, allowing Claude to read and write spreadsheets during conversation. It’s fun to be able to ask questions like “How many unique visitors did we have in April?” and getting answers pulled straight from your spreadsheets.
Since then we’ve continued improving our spreadsheet API, and we’ve put together a new version of our MCP server with some improvements that make working with spreadsheets in Claude even more fun.
What’s new in v1.2.0
The main addition is semantic search. GRID automatically identifies labels within your spreadsheets using heuristics, and now you can search by concept rather than exact wording. For example, you might ask Claude to “find our customer acquisition costs” and it could match that to a spreadsheet label like “New client onboarding expenses” or “User acquisition spend”. Behind the scenes, the search returns ranked results showing which labels match best, along with their cell references and current values. This means, using our MCP server, you can think in terms of what the data represents without needing to remember the exact terminology used in your spreadsheets.
We’ve also added a workbook listing tool that lets Claude see all the spreadsheets in your GRID account at once. This eliminates the need to hunt around for workbook ids or remember which spreadsheet contains which data. Claude can now browse your entire collection and pick the right one for your question.
Under the hood improvements
Beyond the user-facing features, we’ve also made some architectural changes that improve reliability and make the code easier to work with.
The biggest change is migrating to the official GRID SDK. The original version used custom fetch utilities to talk to GRID’s API, which worked but required us to maintain our own HTTP client code. By using our SDK, we get better error handling, automatic retries, and all the benefits of a properly maintained package. (You can get these benefits too: our SDKs for JavaScript and Python are free to use in your own projects.)
Better tools, same simple setup
Even with these improvements, the setup process remains the same as before: clone the repo, run npm install, add your GRID API key to Claude’s config, and you’re ready to go. The difference is that now Claude has four tools instead of three, and they’re all more capable than before. Our original blog post has full instructions on setting up the MCP server locally.
What’s next?
This MCP server remains a fun experiment for us; a useful way to stay current with MCP developments as it continues to evolve. It’s a chance to explore what’s possible when LLMs can directly access spreadsheet data. Future work may include improving the MCP server’s visualisation tools and keeping it in sync with our API and SDK as we add more features.
Try our updated MCP server now: clone, install, and ask Claude to search your sheets!
News
Updates and announcements
02.12.2024
Bringing spreadsheets into the AI-first era
Introducing GRID's new mission The current wave of AI is arguably the biggest shift in user interfaces since the advent of the GUI. Meanwhile, spreadsheets remain a cornerstone of the business world — resilient, ubiquitous, and indispensable despite repeated predictions of their demise. The fusion of AI and spreadsheets is poised to be big, but it requires a fundamental rethinking — not bringing AI to traditional spreadsheets, but reimagining spreadsheets and their workflows for the AI-first era. With a unique set of cutting-edge spreadsheet technologies, GRID is uniquely positioned — and determined — to lead this transformation. AI-First The AI-first paradigm is defined by three key characteristics: Language-oriented: We interact with computers in our language, not theirs. Task-centric: Work starts with the task at hand, not the hunt for the right software. Agentic: Computers will act on our behalf, even when we’re not there. Spreadsheets Spreadsheets are not just tools; they are foundational to modern business: Ubiquitous: Over 1 billion users worldwide rely on them. Empowering: As the original low-code solution, they enable business users to solve problems independently. The fabric of business: Spreadsheets likely hold more business logic and data than any formal IT system. Bringing them together With the world’s most advanced independent spreadsheet engine — designed for lightning-fast performance and seamless compatibility with Excel and Google Sheets — and a suite of other powerful spreadsheet technologies, GRID is uniquely positioned to redefine the future of spreadsheets in an AI-first world. We’re bridging the gap between AI and spreadsheets, delivering the reliable and verifiable calculations that AI solutions currently lack. Bringing spreadsheets to ChatGPT Today, we’re taking a major step forward by expanding the Alpha testing of our ChatGPT solution and opening registrations for early access. Sign up now to secure your spot in the Alpha and see GRID’s solution in action!
26.08.2020
GRID closes $12M in Series A funding round led by NEA
We’re thrilled to announce that we have closed a $12M Series A funding round led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA), with participation from our existing investors BlueYard Capital, Slack Fund, Acequia Capital and other strategic partners! This funding will enable us to bring GRID to market and power accelerated product development. For more information see our press release. Additional coverage: Tech Crunch: GRID raises $12M Series A to turn spreadsheets into 'visual narratives' SiliconANGLE: Iceland's Grid lands $12M to help workers make their spreadsheets more visual Tech Target: Analytics startup Grid raises $12 million in funding
27.03.2019
GRID closes $3.5M seed funding
We are thrilled to share some great news with you: We just closed $3.5M in seed funding! The investment is led by BlueYard Capital, with participation from strategic investors such as Slack Fund, Acequia Capital and angel investor Charlie Songhurst. We are happy to work with this group, as they add a lot of value to our mission other than their funding. Needless to say, they deeply believe in our mission to empower people to turn any spreadsheet into a beautiful web report, dashboard or interactive application. After our private Alpha launch a few weeks ago, we are now all heads-down again working on product, strategy, network expansion and go-to-market planning. This investment - on top of our $1M angel round in October - fuels current plans well into 2021. It gives us breathing room to focus on building the initial version of our product, take it to market and grow it from there - by delighting our users. We will be adding a few people to our team in the coming weeks and months. This is a fantastic opportunity to join an exciting startup at an inflection point. Take a look at our open positions, and keep an eye on our tweets.