Ask HN: Anyone using the Claude Excel extension/add-in in anger?

[dabaja]

I tried it for pretty normal spreadsheet work (summarising ranges, generating a few formulas, light cleanup) and it absolutely nuked tokens, hitting my max limit in under ~10 minutes. Feels way too aggressive for what’s happening on screen, so I’m wondering if this is expected or if it’s doing something pathological like re-sending huge chunks of the sheet/workbook every call or running chatty multi-step prompts under the hood. If you’ve used it, what’s your experience, any idea why it burns so hard, and are there practical ways to tame it?