Can I use a local AI model with a spreadsheet?
Yes. Grid by Zaweba connects to a free AI model running on your own PC through Ollama or LM Studio, so AI help with formulas and data stays on your machine.
It can. Grid by Zaweba connects to a free AI model running on your own PC, through Ollama or LM Studio, and use it for every AI action: writing and explaining formulas, cleaning and analysing data, and the Ask AI panel. With a local model, nothing about your sheet leaves your computer.
Why a local model
Spreadsheets hold the things people least want to share: salaries, budgets, customer lists, health records, a small business's real figures. Cloud AI services can be very capable, but using one means sending the relevant cells to someone else's servers. A model running on your PC removes that question altogether.
It also means the AI works without an internet connection, which fits a spreadsheet that's designed to be offline anyway.
Setting up Ollama or LM Studio
A local AI runner, such as Ollama or LM Studio, installed on your PC with a model downloaded. Both are separate free programs. Once one is running, connect it in Grid through the AI menu as your account. Grid then talks to it on your own machine.
Bigger models give better answers and need more memory and a stronger graphics card. Smaller models run on modest PCs and are fine for simpler jobs like explaining a formula or tidying a column. It's worth trying a couple to see what your PC handles comfortably.
What a local model can do in Grid
Everything the AI menu offers. Write a formula... turns a sentence into a formula, and Grid checks the suggestion with its own engine before offering to insert it, which matters even more with a smaller model that may make mistakes. Explain this formula and Fix this formula help with formulas you didn't write. Clean up data, Fill down from examples, Translate cells..., Analyse selection, Suggest a chart and Generate sample data all work too, with table replies previewed before they're written into cells.
The Ask AI panel, opened with Ctrl+Shift+I, holds the conversation and a Context sent view, so you can see exactly what Grid passed to the model.
Generate picture... is the exception: it needs an account that can make images, which most local text models can't.
What gets passed to the model
Even locally, Grid sends only what a request needs: the sheet name, the selection's address and size, the active cell with its formula and referenced values, the header row, the selected cells as text up to 200 rows by 30 columns, and up to 40 formulas. That keeps requests small enough for local models to handle quickly.
Mixing local and cloud
You don't have to choose one for ever. Accounts are connected through the AI menu, and keys for cloud services are encrypted for your Windows account and kept in a shared AI store on your PC. A sensible pattern is a local model for anything confidential and a cloud model you already pay for when a sheet holds nothing private and you'd like a stronger answer.
Without any AI
All of this is optional. Grid's formulas, tables, charts, pivot tables and printing work with no AI connected at all, and the AI actions simply stay greyed out.
For anyone who wants AI help but not at the price of their privacy, a local model in Grid by Zaweba is the straightforward answer: your spreadsheet, your PC, your model.
