Excel Copilot Python Needs Workbook Execution Manifests

Copilot Python inverts that entirely. A natural-language prompt goes in, an LLM translates it into Python, the container executes it, and a dataframe comes back. Microsoft’s own =PY documentation confirms the workbook retains the submitted Python expression in the formula bar — that much is captured. The remaining gap is what Excel doesn’t expose: no durable execution record binds that formula’s output to the exact source range, runtime, package versions, execution timestamp, and rerun state. We’ve traded old, inspectable-if-ugly VBA for execution that, absent a deliberate capture step, leaves no equivalent structured record. Without a forced record, that’s not a governance upgrade. It’s a regression dressed up as one.