Office Document Skills for Claude Code

Professional Office document creation and editing workflows for the command line, powered by Claude Code.

What is this?

This repository packages the same Office document manipulation skills used by Claude desktop for use with Claude Code (the CLI version). You get the full power of Claude's document creation capabilities in your terminal, ready to integrate with scripts, CI/CD pipelines, or automated workflows.

update 2026-04-01:
This repo was published before Anthropic made these skills public themselves.
For anyone interested in this I suggest you rather have a look at the official repo as the skills there may be getting updates:

https://github.com/anthropics/skills/tree/main/skills

Supported Formats

PowerPoint (PPTX) - Create presentations from scratch or templates, with HTML-to-PPTX conversion
Word (DOCX) - Edit documents with tracked changes, OOXML manipulation, redlining workflows
Excel (XLSX) - Build financial models with formulas, formatting, and zero-error validation
PDF - Fill forms, merge documents, extract data, convert to images

Key Capabilities

PowerPoint

HTML-to-PPTX conversion - Design slides in HTML/CSS, render to PPTX with full formatting
Template-based creation - Rearrange slides, replace text with JSON, preserve formatting
Visual validation - Generate thumbnail grids to catch text cutoff and layout issues
OOXML editing - Direct XML manipulation for precise control

Word

Tracked changes (redlining) - Professional document editing with change tracking
OOXML manipulation - Add comments, modify structure, preserve formatting
Text extraction - Export content with tracked changes preserved

Excel

Formula-based models - Working formulas with zero-error requirement
Professional formatting - Color-coded inputs/formulas, custom number formats
Data validation - Years as text, zeros formatted as "-", proper cell styling

PDF

Form filling - Populate fillable PDFs programmatically
Document merging - Combine multiple PDFs
Format conversion - PPTX to PDF, PDF to images
Data extraction - Pull information from PDF forms and documents

Getting Started

Prerequisites

# Python dependencies
venv/bin/pip install -r requirements.txt

# Node.js dependencies (for html2pptx)
npm install

# System tools (usually pre-installed)
# - LibreOffice (soffice)
# - Poppler (pdftoppm)
# - Pandoc

Using with Claude Code

Simply tell Claude Code what you want to create:

> Create a quarterly sales presentation with 5 slides
> Create a powerpoint presentation based on @input/slide_notes.txt
> Edit this Word document and add tracked changes
> Build an Excel financial model for budget projections
> Fill out this PDF form with data from this JSON

Claude Code will:

Check if a skill exists for your task
Read the appropriate SKILL.md workflow
Execute the workflow step-by-step
Save all outputs to outputs/<document-name>/

Manual Usage

All scripts can also be run directly:

# Create PowerPoint thumbnail grid
venv/bin/python public/pptx/scripts/thumbnail.py template.pptx outputs/review/thumbnails

# Rearrange slides
venv/bin/python public/pptx/scripts/rearrange.py template.pptx outputs/deck/final.pptx 0,5,5,12,3

# Extract text inventory
venv/bin/python public/pptx/scripts/inventory.py deck.pptx outputs/deck/inventory.json

# Replace text from JSON
venv/bin/python public/pptx/scripts/replace.py input.pptx outputs/deck/replacements.json outputs/deck/output.pptx

Repository Structure

public/
├── pptx/           # PowerPoint workflows
│   ├── SKILL.md    # Main workflow documentation
│   ├── html2pptx.md # HTML-to-PPTX guide
│   ├── ooxml.md    # OOXML editing guide
│   └── scripts/    # Python/JS utilities
├── docx/           # Word workflows
├── pdf/            # PDF workflows
└── xlsx/           # Excel workflows

outputs/            # Your generated documents (gitignored)
└── <project-name>/ # One directory per document

How It Works

Each format has a SKILL.md file that defines the workflow. Claude Code:

Checks for skills - Before writing custom code, checks if a skill exists
Reads the skill - Loads the complete workflow from SKILL.md
Follows the workflow - Executes each step precisely
Validates outputs - Runs validation scripts (OOXML formats)
Organizes files - All outputs go to outputs/<document-name>/

Example: Creating a Presentation from Template

# 1. Extract template text
venv/bin/python -m markitdown template.pptx

# 2. Generate thumbnails
venv/bin/python public/pptx/scripts/thumbnail.py template.pptx outputs/sales-deck/thumbnails

# 3. Rearrange slides
venv/bin/python public/pptx/scripts/rearrange.py template.pptx outputs/sales-deck/working.pptx 0,15,15,23,8

# 4. Extract text inventory
venv/bin/python public/pptx/scripts/inventory.py outputs/sales-deck/working.pptx outputs/sales-deck/inventory.json

# 5. Generate replacement JSON (with formatting)
# Creates outputs/sales-deck/replacements.json

# 6. Apply replacements
venv/bin/python public/pptx/scripts/replace.py outputs/sales-deck/working.pptx outputs/sales-deck/replacements.json outputs/sales-deck/final.pptx

Claude Code handles all these steps automatically when you ask it to create a presentation.

Why Use This?

Desktop/Web Claude is Great For

Interactive document creation
Visual feedback during creation

Claude Code is Great For

Automation - Generate monthly reports, process batches of documents
Custom workflows - Combine with other tools (databases, APIs, scripts)
Server environments - Run headless without desktop GUI
Template iteration - Rapidly test changes to document templates

Use Cases

Automated reporting - Generate weekly/monthly presentations from database data
Batch processing - Convert 100 HTML pages to PPTX slides
Create sales decks based on product data you pulled from a RAG system
Document pipelines - Pull data → populate Excel → generate PDF → email
API integration - Webhook triggers document generation
learn how to build similar agents for other tasks

Documentation

Getting started: See CLAUDE.md for repository conventions
Workflows: Each public/*/SKILL.md defines complete workflows
Skills system: skills-system.md explains the skills-check pattern
Claude Code docs: docs.claude.com/claude-code
Desktop version: Create and edit files with Claude

Output Directory Convention

All generated files go to outputs/<document-name>/:

outputs/
├── quarterly-sales-report/
│   ├── final.pptx
│   ├── thumbnails_grid.png
│   ├── inventory.json
│   └── replacements.json
├── employee-handbook/
│   ├── handbook.docx
│   └── unpacked/
└── budget-2024/
    └── budget.xlsx

This keeps your working directory clean and makes automation easier.

Attribution

Most scripts and workflows in this repository come directly from Claude (Anthropic's AI assistant) and are included here verbatim. If Anthropic wishes for this repository to be taken down, please contact me and I will comply immediately.

Contributing

This is a skills repository. To add capabilities:

Add scripts to public/<format>/scripts/
Document in the appropriate SKILL.md
Update CLAUDE.md with new commands
Ensure validation scripts pass

xlsx