Show HN: Sheet Ninja – Google Sheets as a CRUD Back End for Vibe Coders

Nice execution on the Google Sheets as backend angle — it's a much lower friction onboarding story than "set up a database." How are you handling concurrent writes when multiple users edit the sheet at the same time?

This is a great project, very cool, but it is actually insane to me that CRUD is so apparently hard that Google Sheets is the best solution

I put Google Sheets as a backend (in production) when i wanted a select non technical people to be able to see and modify the data without the cost of building a backend.

I really wish auth was easier to setup for services though, i see no reason google can't provide this out of the box

Don’t really get the purpose for this apart from throw away projects.

For vibe coders is it really “hours” setting up a database these days? GCP cloud sql + drizzle ORM is minutes and actually scales unlike a spreadsheet, heck Claude can even write you a deployment script and run it over GCP CLI.

Version-controllable, plaintext knowledge bases have a durability advantage that no SaaS tool can match. Your notes will outlive any company.

I like this idea, I wrote a tiny CRM-like thing for my mom a month or so ago (upgrade from a google sheet that I had previously upgraded from an Apple Note) and it uses Sheets as it's backend. She can always go back to the Sheet and lose nothing but the web interface she uses it tailored to exactly what she needs. I couldn't be happier with it and she loves it.

I'll have to remember this for my next little one-off tool.

Afaik Google Sheets comes with REST API endpoints by default.

How is this different?

Which scenarios do and which DO NOT require Sheet Ninja?

SQLite, SQLite + drizzle with WAL mode, push it to a VPS, do not waste your time on anything else :)

Thank me when things become super easy!

When things scale, SQLite will still be fine, will fit 99% of the vibe coders needs!

When they don't then migrate to what ever!

Hi all - a friend and I have been dabbling in the entrepreneur space for years, but we never really pulled the trigger because of our corporate jobs. We suffer from the same thing that plagues a lot of engineers: we know how to build products, but we are weak at distribution and marketing.

We feel that being able to build is becoming table stakes and the ability to actually get a product into people's hands is more important than ever. We built SheetNinja (https://sheetninja.io) to force ourselves to learn that side of the business from the ground up.

We chose a validated market (sheets-to-api) so we could focus on the "how to find users" problem rather than wondering if the category was useful. It also fits our current "vibe coding" workflow i.e. when we use LLMs or Replit to spin up an idea, a Google Sheet is often the fastest way to handle CRUD without the friction of setting up a traditional database.

We are looking for feedback on the tool itself and the landing page. We have a lot of visitors but a lower sign-up rate atm.

Thanks, in advance!

https://sheetninja.io

I'm not sure I see why this needs to be a paid service. Unless I understand incorrectly, you can get the same result for free, self contained, with freely available code like this: https://gist.github.com/richardblondet/ce87a397ef669d4d25dd2...

Really good project for a quick data back end.

One feature suggestion: webhook support for row changes:

If my Sheet updates (say, a new waitlist signup), I'd want to trigger for e.g. a Slack notification. Supabase has something similar with their database webhooks. I use that extensively for kicking off signup workflows.

I think it can be one option to achieve a tiny goal. Some companies often think that using AWS or GCP is too much of a stretch for a minimum target. So, it can be a good way to meet their request.

This site is pretty broken. The project seems cool but I’d recommend a more static landing page. I bounced very quickly. Didn’t even make it to the bottom with all the distracting animations.

I really like the idea of using Google Sheets for quick prototyping and maybe "vibe coding" without the friction of setting up a traditional DB.

I haven’t noticed a scrolling issues, btw

I have done this for my own projects for years it’s great for projects that are only for me and gives me a very good db editor also. Cool project though the only risk I see is that if the target audience are vibe coders they will you known just vibe code an integration

Did this 9 years ago :o, cached it though.

You do not need to go through these guys Google provides access to the URL to use the sheet as a database and also allows you to deploy Javascript and even host the site with AppScript (example https://script.google.com/macros/s/AKfycbzYt_aXBdQlnMM7idlVD... )

I made a similar project: https://veneer.leftium.com

You can publish any publicly readable sheet/form (append rows with publicly available form):

- sample sheet: https://veneer.leftium.com/s.1RoVLit_cAJPZBeFYzSwHc7vADV_fYL...

- sample form: https://veneer.leftium.com/g.chwbD7sLmAoLe65Z8

A pay option like this definitely seems worse than the Firebase backend that AI Studio would automatically use.

Umm, does Google sheets let you fetch rows in O(log(n)) time or aggregate numbers?

Just impossible to read the landing page on mobile due to endless carousel sliding which constantly returns you to the top of the page

Looks great! I’ve definitely wanted this exact thing before. I will consider reaching for this next time I need to throw together a quick app.

If this site does not run on top of a google sheet then don't believe it.

The animations in the page keeps interrupting me and scrolling me up after I scroll past them.

Oh man fix the site. If I scroll down it auto scrolls up after 2 seconds. And other bugs.

Is this meant to replace databases?

Awesome！

"Ship now, pay later" you're not wrong.

Do vibe coders need an api for an api? Sounds like something solvable with a skill

Good project but I wish something like this can exist for proton mail, I have made some puppeteer scripts which can hook up to proton docs.

But Proton is really doing some great disservice to not having a public api for their docs.

I can imagine it being used for anonymous comments page for webpages etc.

I am not sure if there is something that you can do about it though given that the fundamental issue of this is caused by proton not having an api whereas I think google docs does have API.

It's more a message to proton if anything.

The world needs less vibe coded slop, not more

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