# SheetBrain: A Neuro-Symbolic Agent for Accurate Reasoning over Complex and Large Spreadsheets

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.19247 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.19247/

## Key facts

- Cited by 8 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Knowledge- and tool-augmented reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning.
- Builds on 21 of its 35 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 22 Oct 2025.

## Placed in

- LLM reasoning / [Knowledge- and tool-augmented reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/lr/knowledge-and-tool-augmented-reasoning/)
- LLM agents and tool use / [Financial trading and forecasting agents](https://mlsanity.com/agents/financial-trading-and-forecasting-agents/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 21 of 21)

- [Qwen3 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.09388/) (2025)
- [Evaluating Large Language Models Trained on Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.03374/) (2021)
- [DeepSeek-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.12948/) (2025)
- [Self-Consistency Improves Chain of Thought Reasoning in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.11171/) (2022)
- [GPT-4o System Card](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.21276/) (2024)
- [LLMs-as-Judges: A Comprehensive Survey on LLM-based Evaluation Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.05579/) (2024)
- [StructGPT: A General Framework for Large Language Model to Reason over Structured Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.09645/) (2023)
- [Chain of Draft: Thinking Faster by Writing Less](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.18600/) (2025)
- [TAPEX: Table Pre-training via Learning a Neural SQL Executor](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.07653/) (2021)
- [Large Language Models(LLMs) on Tabular Data: Prediction, Generation, and Understanding -- A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.17944/) (2024)
- [MultiHiertt: Numerical Reasoning over Multi Hierarchical Tabular and Textual Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.01347/) (2022)
- [HiTab: A Hierarchical Table Dataset for Question Answering and Natural Language Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.06712/) (2021)
- [Large Language Models are few(1)-shot Table Reasoners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.06710/) (2022)
- [SpreadsheetBench: Towards Challenging Real World Spreadsheet Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.14991/) (2024)
- [Q*: Improving Multi-step Reasoning for LLMs with Deliberative Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.14283/) (2024)
- [DABstep: Data Agent Benchmark for Multi-step Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.23719/) (2025)
- [Chain-of-Action: Faithful and Multimodal Question Answering through Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17359/) (2024)
- [AI Agents: Evolution, Architecture, and Real-World Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.12687/) (2025)
- [MiMoTable: A Multi-scale Spreadsheet Benchmark with Meta Operations for Table Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.11711/) (2024)
- [RealHiTBench: A Comprehensive Realistic Hierarchical Table Benchmark for Evaluating LLM-Based Table Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.13405/) (2025)
- [SheetMind: Actions Set Accuracy, Agents Set the Failure Mode](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.12339/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [SpreadsheetBench 2: Evaluating Agents on End-to-End Business Spreadsheet Workflows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.29955/) (2026)
- [Finch: Benchmarking Finance & Accounting across Spreadsheet-Centric Enterprise Workflows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.13168/) (2025)
- [Beyond Rows to Reasoning: Agentic Retrieval for Multimodal Spreadsheet Understanding and Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.06503/) (2026)
- [Sheet As Token: A Graph-Enhanced Representation for Multi-Sheet Spreadsheet Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.05811/) (2026)
- [Towards Error-Free EHRs: Reasoning-Intensive Consistency Verification Between Clinical Notes and Structured Tables in Electronic Health Records](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.26463/) (2026)
- [MoCA-Agent: A Market-of-Claims Code Agent for Financial and Numerical Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.11537/) (2026)
- [Privacy-Preserving Data Drift Detection and Recovery for Large-Scale LLM Applications via Proxy Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.08245/) (2026)
- [CRAFT: An Agentic Spreadsheet Form Filling System with Template Awareness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.04437/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Understanding and reasoning over complex spreadsheets remain fundamental challenges for large language models (LLMs), which often struggle with accurately capturing the complex structure of tables and ensuring reasoning correctness. In this work, we propose SheetBrain, a neuro-symbolic dual workflow agent framework designed for accurate reasoning over tabular data, supporting both spreadsheet question answering and manipulation tasks. SheetBrain comprises three core modules: an understanding module, which produces a comprehensive overview of the spreadsheet - including sheet summary and query-based problem insight to guide reasoning; an execution module, which integrates a Python sandbox with preloaded table-processing libraries and an Excel helper toolkit for effective multi-turn reasoning; and a validation module, which verifies the correctness of reasoning and answers, triggering re-execution when necessary. We evaluate SheetBrain on multiple public tabular QA and manipulation benchmarks, and introduce SheetBench, a new benchmark targeting large, multi-table, and structurally complex spreadsheets. Experimental results show that SheetBrain significantly improves accuracy on both existing benchmarks and the more challenging scenarios presented in SheetBench. Our code is publicly available at https://github.com/microsoft/SheetBrain.