This user's request is exactly the kind of problem that an AI-native spreadsheet should solve without requiring a macro at all.
The setup is clever. A comic book reading order, separated by empty rows to mark insertion points, that's a practical, human-centered workflow. But the solution the user is asking for, a macro that checks a "Series" column for empty cells and sets those rows to 5 pixels tall, reveals a deeper friction. They're asking a community to write custom code for what should be a native behavior: smart row formatting that adapts to your data's structure.
Notice what the user says about AI tools. They used to rely on them for speed but stopped due to ethical concerns about the companies behind them. That's a meaningful constraint. It means the user values transparency and control over convenience. They're not anti-automation; they're anti-black-box. They want a tool that respects their agency, not one that extracts value from their data without their consent.
This is where the opportunity lives. A modern spreadsheet should let you define named tables across sheets, then apply conditional formatting rules, like "if column X is empty, set row height to 5px", without writing a single line of code. The user's request is a perfect spec for a feature: name your table, pick your column, set your height. Done. No macros, no ethical compromises, no dependency on a third-party AI provider.
What the user is describing is a simple, repeatable pattern. Empty rows as visual separators. A need to preserve those gaps while keeping the rest of the data dense. That's not a hack; it's a design choice. And a tool that respects how people actually work should accommodate that choice natively.
So here's the concrete point: The next time you find yourself asking a forum to write a macro for a formatting task, ask instead whether your tool should already do that. If it doesn't, maybe it's time to explore one that lets you describe what you want, not code how to get it.