6 ms·
OfficeCLI: Office suite for AI agents to read and edit Microsoft Office files
- neilv 3mo ago> OfficeCLI is the first and best Office suite purpose-built for AI agents to read, edit, and automate Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. Free, open-source, single binary, no Office installation required. 1. Calling Microsoft Office simply "Office" without qualification treats it like a trademark, rather than a generic term that was in use for this class of product before MS appropriated it. 2. If you're going to treat it like a trademark, don't violate it in the same sentence.
- janalsncm 3mo agoMS doesn’t need a reason to take your code down from GitHub. If they don’t like what your code does, they can take it down no matter how you word your readme.
- rcarmo 3mo agoNice, but I don't see a lot of ECMA 376 test cases. Both https://github.com/rcarmo/python-office-mcp-server https://github.com/rcarmo/python-office-mcp-server and https://github.com/rcarmo/go-ooxml https://github.com/rcarmo/go-ooxml are ECMA 376 compliant (I made sure), because for headless generation and handling that's kind of important :) Oh, and you're not the first, I started this a year ago. :)
- nojito 3mo agoYour tools don't render the file though and python-pptx hasn't been updated in 2 years.
- all2 3mo agoIt's an open source project. Maybe he'll accept PRs?
- rcarmo 3mo agoAI has zero need to see the renders (you are just wasting tokens) and that is why I built the Go version - I patched a lot of the PPTX code in my MCP server, as it happens.
- doctorpangloss 3mo agowhile i appreciate that you are working on something to give away for free, providing your own little world of value... your comment makes it sound like you've never made powerpoints before. of course, there are a bajillion powerpoints out there in the wild that layer white rectangles to erase stuff from screenshots of charts, among numerous other atrocities
- wongarsu 3mo agoAnd if you task Claude with making a moderately sized powerpoint matching existing style guides, it will spend at most 30% of the time on the initial version. The remaining time is spent rendering out slides, looking at them and adjusting them Of course AI can one-shot slides, but if you want good results where everything is aligned and has proper contrast you need a visual feedback loop
- rcarmo 3mo agoYes, but automatically generated content doesn’t need to do that - like I wrote in another comment, my agents know how to check bounding boxes.
- wongarsu 3mo agoBut bounding boxes don't always match what you want to do visually. Often you need to align to the baseline of text instead of its bounding box. And often you need to compensate for visual weight, making things different sizes so they appear more similarly sized to the eye I'm not saying a pure API view won't work, but it will be a quality compromise compared to also having visual inspection
- 3mo ago
- FailMore 3mo agoI went in the opposite direction and built https://smalldocs.org/ https://smalldocs.org/, which is an office suite AI agents (and humans - including SWEs!) like to use. I say it’s as if “Claude Code & Microsoft Office had a baby...” Code available: https://github.com/espressoplease/smalldocs https://github.com/espressoplease/smalldocs Discord: https://discord.gg/txjATTsDaq https://discord.gg/txjATTsDaq Sample document: https://smalldocs.org/blogs/what-is-a-smalldoc https://smalldocs.org/blogs/what-is-a-smalldoc Invoked via Claude Code by saying stuff like: “sdoc me the plan for this feature”, or “dig into our logs and sdoc me a report on our latency”
- nimonian 3mo agoNeat! I think agents making Word docs and PowerPoints is going to go away. I think something like small docs is the future.
- FailMore 3mo agoThanks very much! That is exactly my view too. It’s also nice to get out of the command line for doing deep reading. I have had a few developers try it, and some small number of them use it week after week (as do I): https://smalldocs.org/analytics https://smalldocs.org/analytics
- SoftTalker 3mo agoI don't think the corporate world is moving away from Word and PowerPoint anytime soon.
- lelanthran 3mo agoThis looks neat, but I don't see any examples of the format on the webpage (And no, I am not going to install Node.js just to see examples of the format).
- FailMore 3mo agoDoes this link not work? https://smalldocs.org/blogs/what-is-a-smalldoc https://smalldocs.org/blogs/what-is-a-smalldoc If you’re talking about the README, you are right, but I think the homepage has a lot of examples you can click: https://smalldocs.org/#learn https://smalldocs.org/#learn
- pietz 3mo agoIf you don't need interactive/animated features, I can absolutely recommend to have the agent build slides in HTML and convert it to PDF. Has been a game changer for me.
- dayone1 3mo agoI’m having trouble having it take reference PowerPoint slides and converting them to html, chart and labels misplaced, the charts don’t look drawn properly, etc. how did you solve this?
- pietz 3mo agoI don't have a great solution here. I rebuilt our PPT master fully in HTML and I'm using a modified version of Google's DESIGN.md to store the references.
- topaztee 3mo agocool, im working on something similar. A fine-tuned model for agents to interact with docx over MCP. they wont have to deal with OOXML vespper.com
- topaztee 3mo agocool, im working on something similar. A fine-tuned model for agents to interact with docx over MCP. they wont have to deal with OOXML. we have a waiting list for beta-users: www.vespper.com
- beepbooptheory 3mo agoFeel like overnight I suddenly started seeing so much stuff and comments on here concerning generating Office documents with the LLMs. What could be driving this? Doesn't latex or similar seem like a better fit here?
- rcarmo 3mo agoPeople want to generate corporate content. For years now, it comes and goes.
- karado 3mo agoMost corporate workplaces are super dependent on the Microsoft Office suite.
- charlieyu1 3mo agoOffice documents have been notoriously difficult to automate for years. I think old .doc files were just a memory dump
- reddalo 3mo agoThe first version of the .doc format was actually a memory dump, which poses security risks and that's why modern Office refuses to open pre-Office '97 .doc files by default.
- nbevans 3mo agoThe idea of Latex being used in business environments could be a meme
- beepbooptheory 3mo agoYeah, but it just feels so ridiculous the other way too! The reason people use Word et al instead markup languages is because of the UI, right? Why does that matter here? After you generate a final PDF, no one needs to know how you made it?
- ohadkr 3mo ago[flagged]
- miketery 3mo agoHow does this do for processing formulas or macros in excel?
- jbgt 3mo agoI'm making a similar tool that tries to do macros as well https://github.com/odcpw/ooxml-cli https://github.com/odcpw/ooxml-cli
- _pdp_ 3mo agoVery good and well done. I found immediate use-case for this.
- StahlGuo 3mo agoRecently, my experience is that the hardest part of writing Enterprise document by AI is not how to generate a word or excel, but to generate a office document that is accountable. First draft generation is just a small part of the whole wore,more time consuming work is validation: whether citation , number,format, or semantic assume is right. So i think enterprise office AI suite may need 2 layers: First is document editing, and second is revision / attribution / validation, or an unaccountable document is not applicable for real enterprise usage.
- aussieguy1234 3mo agoIs there anything like this for OpenOffice/Libreoffice? I have some ideas if there is
- umutm 3mo agoThat is great.. Only the possibility of minimizing token usage when dealing with Office docs makes this very handy.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- allan_s 3mo agoIs it better than letting claude code use python directly ? Especially on those 3 metrics: 1. better prompt adherence 2. visually more pleasing 3. token consumption Especially as I think claude code got some reinforcement learning on these use cases ?
- jbgt 3mo agoNice! i'm making the same - interesting that so many ideas converge. Hopefully we can soon point an GPT6 at all of them and have a super tool. Or else GPT6 can do it without all our helpers... https://github.com/odcpw/ooxml-cli https://github.com/odcpw/ooxml-cli Glad to get feedback on what doesn't work or is missing. I'm also making one for PowerBI - it's in testing. Drop me a line if you're interested.
- luciana1u 3mo ago[flagged]
- jsshwqz 3mo ago[dead]
- jsshwqz 3mo ago[dead]