A: Hey Jollygreen 👋!

Great questions! Let me break this down:

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN APPSCRIPT AND SHEETXAI:

You technically CAN ask GPT to write an appscript that connects your sheet to the LLM API, but here's where the benefit of SheetXAI becomes really apparent:

Once you have to debug, go back and forth between your sheet and ChatGPT, make minor edits when there are issues, describe your sheet structure again, modify the script... the time and frustration adds up fast.

The biggest benefit with all these tools (not just SheetXAI) is CONVENIENCE. For example:
- You could "just ask GPT to make my prompt better" instead of using PrettyPrompt
- You could "just ask GPT to give me a headshot" instead of using Headshotly
- You could "just make an n8n automation" instead of using Zapier

There's always a "just" option for all software, but the amount of time it will take you is many times not even halfway worth it.

Think of this: If your time is worth $25 an hour and you spend 3 hours writing a GPT script that will edit your sheet, and when there are issues you go back and debug and modify... you would have spent wayyy more than the cost of SheetXAI. You're literally spending more than a day's worth of work for something that SheetXAI does instantly with lifetime access for less than a day of your work.

There's a reason why Gemini in Sheets itself doesn't perform as well as SheetXAI - because it's a lot more that happens in the background to perform the way SheetXAI does. We've spent countless hours optimizing how the AI interacts with sheets, handles context, manages operations, and delivers reliable results.

SAI SYSTEM PROMPTS - YOUR FOLLOW-UP QUESTION:

To answer your edit: SAI system prompts are just that - they get inputted and sent to the AI with your system prompt in the system message and your prompt template in the user message. Nothing insane.

We DON'T create assistants (like OpenAI assistants with IDs like "asst_ch2cFhg6vrxrSFFYkxaUMXZY"). There's no true benefit to using an assistant vs creating a JSON message directly through the Messages API, plus not everyone uses the OpenAI API - many people use Claude, Gemini, OpenRouter, etc. Creating assistants would lock people into OpenAI's ecosystem, which defeats the purpose of BYOK flexibility.

So yeah, the prompts are just being used as text input for the model (system message + user message), not creating persistent assistant IDs.

BOTTOM LINE:

Could you build this yourself with appscripts? Technically yes. But you'd spend days (maybe weeks) building, debugging, and maintaining something that SheetXAI does out of the box with lifetime access for less than a day of your work. Plus you get support, updates, new features, and integrations without lifting a finger.

Let me know if you have other questions! 🙂