There is a new AI agent on the block to spend waking people in a spreadsheet.
Navigate to the shortcut AI website and you will find a page that is almost exactly like an empty Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. The main difference is the sidebar chatbot, which can undertake the tedious leg work, such as complex financial models or competitive analysis.
Since the shortcut is proxy, this means it can handle multi-step tasks on behalf of the user, the tool can not only generate Excel formulas or analyze spreadsheet data. In a demo on X, Nico Christie, founder and CEO of Shortcut AI Agent, demonstrated how the tool reloads Google data from Microsoft Distributed Cash Flow Analysis (DCF) by finding Google’s SEC files and populating Google’s SEC files in the same template.
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Shortcuts launched an ominous tagline on Monday: “Try the shortcuts (before the boss).” Christie also said on X that the shortcut Excel agent “a shot of most knowledge work tasks.”
Christie said in a release video that the company tested shortcuts’ skills in private equity, banking, consulting and product management tasks for first-year analysts at McKinsey, Goldman Sachs and others.
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When the manager of the same company scored, he said the shortcut was 89.1% of the time “winning”, although no details about that “winning rate” were specified. Christie also claimed to beat Agent Chatgpt 90% of the time. However, Mashable cannot independently verify these claims.
The emergence of proxy work tools such as shortcuts calls on human CEO Dario Amodei to predict that AI could eliminate half of entry-level white-collar work. Destructive technologies throughout history have often targeted manual labor and blue-collar work through automation and robotics. But today’s advanced AI models are expected to automate desktop work, even complex office tasks. SignalFire’s latest research found that hiring for entry-level technology jobs has decreased, suggesting that AI’s impact on the job market is already effective.
Mixable light speed
The optimistic view is that tools such as shortcuts will work for Workers make room by automating time-consuming tasks to provide more creative and strategic work that AI is not good at. The results may vary from company to company, but agent AI has shaped the way employees do their jobs.
Indeed, shortcut AI agents are sold as secret weapons for financial brothers, consultants, etc. You can edit an existing Excel file in a shortcut and export it to Excel. “No one would know it was made of shortcuts,” Christie said in the release video.
A large number of spreadsheet users are already paying attention. “It looks like the majority of the financial workflow is automated,” said financial creator and writer @highyieldharry on X.”
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Michael Yuan, co-founder of Fintech Company Waverly AI, said: “This is a very important moment for the financial industry! The exciting moment we are in.
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Yuan also pointed out some current limitations of shortcuts: it is slow and has formatting issues. Christie himself also shared that this is “imperfect” and that users need to be easier to review.
How to try shortcut AI
Shortcuts offer two plans: a shortcut for $40 per month Pro or a shortcut for $200 per month, which gives Pro Power users everything in their Pro subscriptions along with unlimited models and other more advanced models and other perks. Both options also have a free trial of 7 days.
You can learn more at tryshortcut.ai.
Note: The shortcut AI Excel proxy has nothing to do with the iOS shortcut keys app, and Apple says the app will undergo an AI makeover during WWDC 2025. There is also an unrelated agent AI company called shortcuts.
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