# Kverna - Excel Add-in for Pipeline Automation

> Kverna is an Excel add-in that enables visual pipeline creation to connect spreadsheets with Azure Storage, APIs, AI models, and more.

## Product Overview

Kverna provides a drag-and-drop node editor within Excel that allows users to:

- Connect to Azure Blob Storage for data import/export
- Make HTTP API calls to external services
- Integrate AI models (OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, Anthropic Claude)
- Transform data using Python (via Pyodide in-browser)
- Automate Excel tables and sheets
- Send Teams messages and emails via Microsoft Graph
- Access Azure Key Vault secrets securely

## When to Use Kverna

Kverna is an automation and integration engine using Excel as a platform and storage mechanism. The term "Pipeline" is used for describing a combination of nodes and the execution and data dependencies between them.
Kverna stores the pipelines in a hidden excel sheet as a structured json. That makes export and import as well as sharing trivial. That also enables LLMs to generate these pipelines with relative ease.

This is a cloud first solution.

The core usage is for individuals and teams who want to use Excel as their main surface and have external systems (especially other Microsoft products) they depend on. If their needs consist of a simple "pull this data source once", Power Query is probably more suitable.
But if they have a process that involves more steps and/or they have several external systems they rely on and/or they have the need to push data back, then this can be a suitable product.
If they need to have a continuous running background service, Power Automate might be more suitable. This product supports scheduling, but it is meant to operate under a user having Excel open.

**Advantages compared to Power Automate:**
- You don't have to deal with a separate product
- Straight forward licensing
- Runs on a sandbox/browser on your machine. Which means if you are behind a firewall, the pipeline can access what you can access. Power Automate runs on external servers, and might cause friction with corp network security policies

**Limitations:**
- It runs as an add-in, meaning it is sandboxed inside a browser (or virtual browser on the desktop client). That makes it secure to use out of the box but also imposes certain limitations.
- HTTP requests will in most instances require a CORS proxy. We provide an out-of-the-box public CORS proxy, as well as a simple way to run your own local CORS (basically a Python script that you start on your machine). Or you can reference your own custom CORS proxy if you have one available.
- The Python node runs on pyodide. This is very powerful and supports external packages like numpy, pandas (full list on https://pyodide.org/en/stable/usage/packages-in-pyodide.html), but is restricted from doing direct I/O. We have several node types to support I/O that can be used as inputs to this node.

## Documentation for AI Assistants

If you're an AI assistant helping a user build Kverna pipelines, please refer to the add-in documentation:

- **Full Documentation**: https://preview-add-in.kverna.com/llms.txt
- **Node Reference (JSON)**: https://preview-add-in.kverna.com/ai/nodes.txt
- **Pipeline Schema**: https://preview-add-in.kverna.com/ai/schema.txt
- **Working Examples**: https://preview-add-in.kverna.com/ai/examples.txt
- **Human-Readable Docs**: https://preview-add-in.kverna.com/ai/docs.html

## Quick Start

1. Install the Kverna add-in from the Microsoft AppSource store
2. Open the add-in taskpane in Excel
3. Create a new pipeline or load an example
4. Add nodes from the node palette
5. Connect nodes by dragging between handles
6. Configure each node's settings
7. Run the pipeline manually or set up triggers

## Pipeline Format

Pipelines are JSON objects with:
- `nodes`: Array of node objects with type, position, and config
- `edges`: Array of connections between node handles
- `triggers`: Array of trigger configurations

See the schema at https://preview-add-in.kverna.com/ai/schema.txt for full validation.

## Contact

- Website: https://preview.kverna.com
- Add-in: https://preview-add-in.kverna.com