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Case study · AI SaaS
Spreadsight · AI · Analytics SaaS · 2026

Shipped a production AI SaaS — spreadsheets in, insights out.

Spreadsight turns messy spreadsheets into beautiful visualizations and actionable insights using AI. We built the full SaaS — auth with OTP, Polar billing wired through BetterAuth, S3 storage with presigned URLs, OpenAI-powered AI pipelines, dashboards, and a realtime sidecar for streaming AI progress to the UI.

Spreadsight AI chat interface alongside a live spreadsheet — questions in, answers grounded in the sheet
Industry
AI · SaaS · Analytics
Region
Global
Year
2026
Scope
Full-stack SaaS · AI pipelines · Auth + OTP · Billing · Storage · Realtime sidecar
Stack
Next.js · React · Prisma · BetterAuth · Polar · AWS S3 · OpenAI (AI SDK) · Arcjet
Context

Spreadsheets are where teams already work — turning them into insights usually means an analyst, formulas, or yet another tool.

Most teams have data in spreadsheets and questions they want answered. Most teams don't have an analyst on hand or the patience for pivot-table acrobatics. The gap between 'we have the data' and 'we have the answer' is where Spreadsight lives.

Upload a sheet. The AI infers the schema, surfaces the patterns, and gives you visualizations and insights you can share. No coding required, no copy-paste into another SaaS.

Challenge

Production AI pipelines with billing, storage, and live streaming from day one.

  1. 01

    Turn messy spreadsheets into structured insights without forcing users to code.

    Column inference, type detection, semantic understanding — all done by the AI pipeline. The user uploads a file; the platform decides what's interesting and why.

  2. 02

    Bill from the auth layer, not as a separate paywall gate.

    Polar wired through BetterAuth so subscription state lives in the session, not a checkpoint the user hits later. Cleaner UX, simpler code.

  3. 03

    Stream AI results to the UI — never feel frozen.

    A realtime sidecar service pushes AI progress to the dashboard as the pipeline runs. Users see the visualization assemble live instead of staring at a spinner.

Approach

Schema-first ingestion, AI-as-pipeline, realtime streaming, paywall at the session layer.

  1. 01

    Schema-first ingestion

    Spreadsheets upload via presigned S3 URLs. The platform infers column types and semantic roles before any AI runs.

  2. 02

    AI pipeline with OpenAI

    The AI SDK orchestrates structured generation against the inferred schema — visualizations, insights, summaries. Streaming responses flow into the realtime sidecar.

  3. 03

    Polar billing through BetterAuth

    Subscription state lives in the user session. The paywall is implicit — the moment a feature requires it, the session knows.

  4. 04

    Background workers for long jobs

    Heavy AI work runs in a TSX-watched worker process. The UI reads from the realtime channel; the worker writes results.

What we shipped

A complete production AI SaaS — auth, billing, storage, pipelines, realtime.

Upload + schema inference

Drag-and-drop sheets; the platform figures out what they are.

Spreadsheet uploads land via presigned S3 URLs. Column types and semantic roles are inferred before any AI runs, so the pipeline starts with a structured view of the data.

Spreadsight dashboard with the upload modal — drag-and-drop a sheet, type-inference begins
AI chat grounded in the sheet

Ask questions; get answers tied to the exact cells used.

An OpenAI-powered chat interface answers questions against the user's sheet, citing the cells it used. Thread history persists per file so the analysis is resumable.

Spreadsight spreadsheet view with grouped cells highlighted by the AI to support an answer
Realtime sidecar

Live progress instead of spinners.

A separate realtime service handles WebSocket fan-out for AI progress. The Next.js app reads from it; users see visualizations and threads update live.

Spreadsight thread history panel showing prior conversations and live streaming responses
Gallery

A few more surfaces.

  • Dashboard create-new menu with options to start a sheet, upload a file, or open a sample
    Dashboard · create menu
  • Dashboard showing a recently uploaded file ready for AI analysis
    Dashboard · file ready
  • Spreadsheet with a cell selected and the AI panel ready to ground an answer in it
    Sheet · cell selection
  • Cells copied into the AI panel as context for the next question
    Sheet · cells as context
  • History view of prior AI conversations on a sheet
    AI history
  • Export menu for an AI-generated analysis with CSV and share options
    Export menu
Stack
  • Next.js (App Router)
  • React
  • TypeScript strict
  • Prisma + Postgres
  • Prisma Accelerate
  • BetterAuth
  • Polar (billing)
  • AWS S3 (storage)
  • OpenAI via AI SDK
  • Arcjet (security)
  • Custom realtime sidecar
Outcome

A complete production AI SaaS — shipped end-to-end in one cohesive build.

Auth, billing, storage, AI pipelines, realtime — all wired through a single session layer. Subscription state lives in the session, not a separate paywall gate.

AI is the hard part on a build like this — Spreadsight proves we can ship it in production, not as a demo.

Building an AI product?

We ship AI-native SaaS — auth, billing, pipelines, realtime, in one cohesive build.

Senior team. Milestone-gated phases. You own the code at handoff. AI is the hard part — we've shipped it in production.

Book a 15-min demo

First call is 15 minutes. We'll tell you whether the AI surface area fits a 2-week wedge or a 6-week flagship build.