document-spreadsheet-tooling-readiness

name	document-spreadsheet-tooling-readiness
description	Use when checking whether this machine can generate and validate requested DOCX, PDF, XLSX, workbook, register, budget, or dashboard outputs.
metadata	{"portable":true,"compatible_with":["claude-code","codex"]}

Document Spreadsheet Tooling Readiness

Acknowledgement: Shared by Peter Bamuhigire, techguypeter.com, [phone].

Required Inputs

Input	Required	Use
Decision, audience, and deliverable	yes	Bound the business outcome
Source evidence, constraints, and owner	yes	Ground recommendations and accountability
Approved budget, customer data, or production artefacts	conditional	Support high-impact execution

Capability and permission contract

Default to read-only analysis and drafting. Do not publish, send, price, promise, alter customer records, commit budget, or modify production artefacts without explicit authority and a named approver. Minimise confidential data, preserve provenance, and keep reversible copies.

Degraded mode

If evidence, stakeholder decisions, specialist tooling, or authoritative commercial data are unavailable, deliver a labelled draft, checklist, or decision memo. State what was not verified and do not claim approval, publication, financial accuracy, or customer acceptance.

Decision rules

Condition	Action	Stop condition
Output creates a commercial, customer, or delivery commitment	Obtain named approval before release	Authority or terms are unclear
Evidence supports a reversible draft	Produce it with assumptions and owner	Required evidence conflicts
Tooling or data is incomplete	Specify validation	A final executable artefact is expected

Domain Anti-Patterns

• Inventing customer evidence, prices, benchmarks, or approvals. Fix: cite the source or mark the gap.
• Publishing or sending a draft without authority. Fix: retain draft status and name the approver.
• Hiding assumptions inside polished prose. Fix: expose them beside each affected decision.
• Polishing presentation while the decision remains unclear. Fix: resolve audience, owner, and acceptance criteria.
• Treating unavailable tooling as passed validation. Fix: record the unassessed check.

Use When

• Before promising or creating .docx, .pdf, .xlsx, application registers, scoring matrices, budgets, dashboards, price schedules, CV packs, reports, or annexes.
• When moving an engine to a new machine and confirming whether document/spreadsheet tooling is installed.

Do Not Use When

• The user only asks for plain Markdown or a conceptual outline and no generated file is claimed.

Required Inputs

• Desired output formats, local tooling access, plugin/connector availability, and any required templates.

Workflow

• Check plugins/connectors first, then Python packages, then binaries.
• Run a one-file smoke test before production export.
• Choose a route and state fallback honestly.
• Never claim a file exists until it was generated and opened or validated.

Quality Standards

• File-output claims are factual claims.
• Fallbacks are explicit, not silent.
• PDF conversion route must be known before promising PDF.
• Background LibreOffice work uses one isolated profile per job through the shared cross-platform launcher.

Anti-Patterns

• Saying a Word, PDF, or Excel file was generated when only Markdown exists.
• Assuming LibreOffice, Pandoc, or a plugin exists without checking.
• Shipping a workbook without reopening or formula/control checks.

Outputs

• Toolchain check, smoke-test result, route decision, fallback plan, and validation note.

References

• references/toolchain-checks.md: Commands and package/binary checklist.
• references/fallback-routes.md: Output routes and fallback decision tree.
• references/libreoffice-headless.md: Required cross-platform headless conversion, diagnosis, and validation contract.

Core Workflow

1. Confirm requested formats and whether a generated file is actually required.
2. Prefer built-in document/spreadsheet plugins where available.
3. Check Python packages: openpyxl, XlsxWriter, pandas, python-docx, docxtpl, docxcompose, pypandoc, markdown, beautifulsoup4, lxml, pillow, PyMuPDF, pypdf, pdfplumber, reportlab.
4. Check binaries: pandoc, soffice/LibreOffice, wkhtmltopdf where needed, and tesseract for OCR tasks.
5. For a LibreOffice conversion or render, read references/libreoffice-headless.md, run the shared launcher --check, and use its isolated-profile conversion path rather than a hand-built soffice command.
6. Run a minimal DOCX and XLSX smoke test before production output on a new machine.
7. Pick the generation route and record it in the deliverable notes.
8. Open, parse, or otherwise validate the generated file before telling the user it was created.