WorkBuddy Tasks Fall Short: Did I Choose the Wrong Mode?

Bottom line: I probably chose the wrong mode in WorkBuddy. Here's a supplement to my previous post "WorkBuddy Table Merging Always Errors." Looking back, errors might just be symptoms; more likely, I didn't assign the task to the appropriate mode.

I've used WorkBuddy for about 1 month. Simple file organization went smoothly, but whenever I tried to summarize daily expense report Excels and supplier reconciliation Excels into a daily report, it always fell short. Yesterday I saw a video mentioning it has different modes; some explained how to choose, others said it can auto-decompose tasks. I was a bit confused. My goal is specific: Merge two workbooks, aggregate amounts by date, and have it figure out inconsistent field names itself.

I previously tried the entry point that looked most like "just doing the work." First attempt generated a bunch of sheets named like reports, but amount columns were empty; second attempt shortened the prompt to just merge, got a parsing failure; third attempt switched to a "plan then execute" mode. It did decompose steps, but still required me to confirm field mapping at the end. In the previous post, I thought the files were messy; now I see the errors behind might be due to mode selection mismatch.

Not sure if this is a common newbie pitfall. Must headers be unified first? Or can't WorkBuddy guess fields across workbooks? Maybe I described it too briefly, and it interpreted literally. Writing fewer lines in the backend was the goal; now it feels like I wrote three extra lines of prompts.

Hereby adding mode selection as a supplement to the original post. When people routinely run table merges, do they feed it fixed templates, or let it identify once and save the task? If it's a mode selection issue, I plan to start trying modes like "plan then execute."