Use when the user asks to create, edit, convert, validate, preview, or password-protect Microsoft Word .docx documents. Triggers include "markdown to docx", "docx to markdown", "fill Word template", "accept tracked changes", "validate docx", "preview docx as image", "encrypt/decrypt docx", and related .docx round-trip or template-fill tasks.
Install with Codex or Claude Copy this prompt, paste it into Codex, Claude, or another assistant, and let it review the skill page and install it for you.
A direct command skips the review prompt. Inspect the source before running it.
Use when the user asks to create, edit, convert, validate, preview, or password-protect Microsoft Word .docx documents. Triggers include "markdown to docx", "docx to markdown", "fill Word template", "accept tracked changes", "validate docx", "preview docx as image", "encrypt/decrypt docx", and related .docx round-trip or template-fill tasks.
tier
2
version
1
license
LicenseRef-Proprietary
docx skill
Purpose: Give the agent a deterministic, script-first way to create,
edit, and convert Microsoft Word .docx files so it does not have to
re-derive low-level OOXML constructs (page sizes, tables, tracked
changes, comment markers, image embeddings, template substitution) on
every task. Writing .docx by hand through docx-js or python-docx
calls is feasible but error-prone; the scripts here encode the
practical knowledge and make the common operations a single command.
1. Red Flags (Anti-Rationalization)
STOP and READ THIS if you are thinking:
"I'll just assemble the docx inline with docx-js calls, the scripts are overkill." โ WRONG. md2docx.js already handles page size, numbering, dual-width tables, and image alt-text โ regressions from hand-rolled code usually show as silently broken tables or images on Word for Windows.
"I can skip docx_fill_template.py's run-merge pass and just regex-replace {{placeholder}}." โ WRONG. Word and Google Docs fracture a single placeholder across multiple <w:r> siblings after spell-check or autocorrect; a naรฏve regex won't match and the placeholder will ship unfilled.
"For tracked changes I'll just delete every <w:del> block." โ WRONG. That loses author attribution and breaks paragraph-level delete markers. Use docx_accept_changes.py which drives LibreOffice's own accept dispatcher.
"The smart-quote entity rewrite in office/unpack.py is ugly, I'll turn it off." โ WRONG. Different Word builds round-trip UTF-8 quotes inconsistently. Keeping them as ’ etc. on unpack and reversing on pack makes edits deterministic.
"I'll just regex-replace \| in OOXML to extract or modify text." โ WRONG. Raw XML regex operates on serialised bytes and breaks namespace prefixes, entity encoding, and split-run anchors. Use docx_replace.py (anchor-and-action surgical edit) which works at the lxml element level after run canonicalisation.
"I need to edit a .docx and the docx2md โ md2docx round-trip loses styling." โ Use docx_replace.py --replace instead. It operates at run level, preserving bold/italic/colour/numbering. Round-trip through markdown is lossy: inline formatting, list numbering schemas, and table borders all flatten.
2. Capabilities
Surgical anchor-and-action edit of a live .docx (no template required) via docx_replace.py โ find a text anchor and --replace TEXT / --insert-after PATH / --delete-paragraph without a lossy docx2md โ md2docx round-trip. Run-level formatting (bold, italic, colour, numbering) is preserved. --insert-after automatically relocates images, charts, OLE objects, SmartArt diagrams, and numbered/bulleted lists from the MD source into the base document (docx-6.5 + docx-6.6 v2 relocators, 2026-05-12). Honest scope: --replace requires the anchor to fit within a single <w:t> after run-merge (cross-run anchors not supported, R10.a); --insert-after and --delete-paragraph work at paragraph granularity. Anchor not found โ exit 2 AnchorNotFound; last-paragraph delete refused โ exit 2 LastParagraphCannotBeDeleted.
Convert Markdown to .docx with headings, lists, tables, images, and optional mermaid diagrams via md2docx.js.
Convert HTML / web archives to .docx via html2docx.js โ accepts .html/.htm, Chrome .mhtml/.mht, and Safari .webarchive (sub-resources extracted to a temp dir). Confluence, GitLab wiki, and CMS chrome (ARIA-role-tagged headers/sidebars/footers, namespaced <ac:*> macros, tablesorter<button> wrappers) is stripped automatically before walking. Inline SVG diagrams (drawio/mermaid/PlantUML) are rastered to PNG via a two-tier renderer: Tier 1 = headless Chrome / Chromium / Edge / Brave (auto-detected from conventional install paths or HTML2DOCX_BROWSER) gives pixel-perfect CSS layout including foreignObject labels and word-wrap; Tier 2 = @resvg/resvg-js fallback for hosts without a browser, with foreignObject โ SVG <text> conversion that preserves drawio's centring math, synthesises a viewBox on canvas-clipped diagrams (5% expansion absorbs drawio's edge-overshoot artifact), and word-wraps long Cyrillic/Latin labels at the wrapper's width:Npx so text fits inside its box. --reader-mode opt-in: stripped CMS chrome via a curated candidate list (, , , ) with per-candidate min-text filter โ useful for browser-saved news / blog pages where Confluence-priority selectors fall through to .
3. Execution Mode
Mode: script-first.
Why this mode: Each operation is a small, deterministic CLI wrapping a specific OOXML-aware library. Inline assembly in the agent's text is slower and regresses on details (page size, DXA units, namespace ordering). Scripts also make the skill reusable from any shell environment.
node scripts/html2docx.js INPUT OUTPUT.docx [--header "TEXT"] [--footer "TEXT"] [--reader-mode] [--json-errors] โ INPUT may be .html/.htm, .mhtml/.mht, or .webarchive; sub-resources in archives are extracted to a temp dir automatically (cleaned up on exit incl. SIGINT/SIGTERM). --reader-mode swaps the article-root candidate list for a CMS/blog-specific one (#main-content/.entry/.post-content/article with per-candidate min-text filter; bare <main> deliberately omitted as it wraps whole-site chrome on news sites). Override SVG renderer with HTML2DOCX_BROWSER=/path/to/chrome or set it to a non-existent path to force the resvg-js fallback for CI determinism. Set HTML2DOCX_ALLOW_NO_SANDBOX=1 only inside a trusted CI container โ default leaves Chrome's sandbox enabled.
python3 scripts/office_passwd.py INPUT [OUTPUT] (--encrypt PASSWORD | --decrypt PASSWORD | --check) โ pass - as PASSWORD to read it from stdin.
python3 scripts/docx_add_comment.py INPUT.docx OUTPUT.docx --anchor-text TEXT --comment BODY [--author NAME] [--initials AB] [--date ISO] [--all]
python3 scripts/docx_add_comment.py INPUT.docx OUTPUT.docx --parent N --comment BODY [--author NAME] โ reply to comment N (inherits its anchor range; threads via ).
5. Safety Boundaries
Allowed scope: only the input/output paths named on the command line and, for Python scripts, modules under scripts/. Never modify files the user did not name.
Default exclusions: never overwrite the input in place unless the same path is also passed as output; never fetch remote images silently; never install npm/pip packages globally.
Destructive actions: docx_accept_changes.py rewrites the destination; always use a distinct output path unless the user explicitly asks for in-place replacement. office/pack.py overwrites the destination archive.
Optional artifacts: the office/schemas/ directory is optional; office/validate.py runs structural checks without it and only warns about missing XSDs unless --strict.
6. Validation Evidence
Local verification:
cd skills/docx/scripts && npm install โ installs docx, marked, mammoth, turndown, image-size, turndown-plugin-gfm into scripts/node_modules/.
node scripts/md2docx.js examples/fixture-simple.md /tmp/out.docx && unzip -l /tmp/out.docx | grep word/document.xml โ exits 0 and lists the document part.
node scripts/docx2md.js /tmp/out.docx /tmp/back.md && test -s /tmp/back.md โ round-trips non-empty Markdown. On a docx with comments / tracked changes, also writes /tmp/back.docx2md.json (schema v:1); on a docx with footnotes/endnotes, the markdown gets pandoc-style [^fn-N] markers + definitions block at the end. See references/docx2md-sidecar.md for the full schema and --metadata-json / --no-metadata / --no-footnotes flags. Same-path (docx2md.js foo.docx foo.docx) is refused with exit 6 (SelfOverwriteRefused) so the input is never destroyed.
python3 scripts/office/validate.py /tmp/out.docx โ exits 0, prints OK or only warnings.
python3 scripts/docx_add_comment.py /tmp/out.docx /tmp/commented.docx --anchor-text "Quarterly" --comment "Verify this number" --author "QA Bot" && python3 -m office.validate /tmp/commented.docx โ adds a Word comment anchored on the substring; output validates and contains a <w:comment> part. See references/add-comment-howto.md for the full verification protocol.
python3 scripts/docx_merge.py /tmp/merged.docx /tmp/out.docx /tmp/out.docx --page-break-between && python3 -m office.validate /tmp/merged.docx โ merges N inputs (here, two copies of out.docx) with a hard page break between them; output validates clean.
Expected evidence: /tmp/out.docx, /tmp/back.md, /tmp/unpacked/ tree, . All reproducible from .
7. Instructions
Use graduated language: steps marked MUST are safety-critical; the
rest are behavioural defaults with their rationale.
7.1 Select the right script before touching low-level APIs
Look up the task in ยง10 Quick Reference first. If a script exists, run it โ it captures accumulated OOXML knowledge that inline code tends to get wrong.
Drop to docx-js or python-docx calls only when the user's requirement genuinely is not covered (e.g. inserting a custom content control, manipulating a specific style's inheritance chain).
7.2 Install dependencies locally
MUST run bash scripts/install.sh once. It creates scripts/.venv/ and scripts/node_modules/ locally (nothing installed globally), prints a warning for any missing system tool, runs a smoke-test of the documented commands before declaring success, and is idempotent.
Invocation โ python3 is safe. The Python CLIs self-bootstrap into scripts/.venv: python3 scripts/X.py โฆ and ./.venv/bin/python scripts/X.py โฆ are equivalent โ on a host where python3 is not the venv (pyenv / conda / system Python), the script re-execs itself into scripts/.venv. If the venv is missing, you get a run: bash scripts/install.sh hint instead of a raw ModuleNotFoundError. (Node CLIs resolve scripts/node_modules, also local.)
External system tools (checked by install.sh, installed manually per project plan ยง3.3 "ะฒะฝะตัะฝะธะต ะธะฝััััะผะตะฝัั โ ะฝะต ะฑะฐะฝะดะปัััั"):
LibreOffice (soffice) โ required by docx_accept_changes.py. macOS: brew install --cask libreoffice. Debian: sudo apt install libreoffice --no-install-recommends. Fedora: sudo dnf install libreoffice.
Commands that need it fail with a clear error until it's installed.
7.3 Creating .docx from Markdown
Prefer md2docx.js over hand-writing new Document({...}).
Page size / orientation / margins are exposed as flags โ default US Letter portrait (backward-compatible): --page-size A4|Letter, --landscape, --margins T,R,B,L (dxa, each value optionally mm-suffixed). Content width, tables, and images/Mermaid diagrams all auto-derive from the chosen page, so they never overflow A4 โ no manual word/document.xml patching needed. Example: node scripts/md2docx.js report.md report.docx --page-size A4.
For headers/footers use --header "โฆ" / --footer "โฆ". Multi-line headers are a single string with \n โ md2docx.js splits on the newline.
7.4 Extracting text from .docx to Markdown
Use docx2md.js for GFM output with tables preserved. If the document contains images, a sibling <stem>_images/ directory is created โ tell the user so they know to ship it alongside the Markdown.
For docs that carry comments or tracked changes, the converter writes a JSON sidecar <stem>.docx2md.json next to the Markdown. Tell the user to ship the sidecar alongside the markdown if the audit trail matters; the sidecar's absence on a clean doc is a feature, not a missing artefact. Field semantics + the unsupported counters are documented in references/docx2md-sidecar.md.
For docs with footnotes/endnotes, the markdown body gets pandoc-style [^fn-N] / [^en-N] markers and definitions appended at the end. Pass --no-footnotes if downstream tooling can't parse pandoc syntax.
MUST NOT invoke docx2md.js with the same input and output path โ the cross-7 H1 guard exits 6 (SelfOverwriteRefused), but better to never tempt it.
For plain text without any formatting, pandoc -t plain is a valid alternative but external โ document this choice to the user rather than silently switching tools.
7.5 Filling a template
MUST ensure the template contains placeholders in the exact form {{key}} or {{nested.key}}. Spaces inside the braces ({{ key }}) are tolerated; anything else ([key], ${key}, <%=key%>) is not recognised.
Provide data.json as an object at the top level.
Pass --strict when the template must be fully resolved (legal documents, customer-facing letters). Without --strict, unresolved placeholders remain in the output and are listed on stderr.
7.6 Accepting tracked changes
docx_accept_changes.py requires LibreOffice. Check _soffice.py locates it before telling the user it "just works" โ on some CI images LibreOffice is absent.
Output must be a new path; do not overwrite the input unless asked. Even then, prefer an intermediate file and move on success.
LibreOffice 26.2 limitation: the CLI macro:/// dispatch this script relies on is unreliable on 26.2 (dropped on cold profiles while soffice exits 0). The script self-verifies: if revision marks survive, it removes the bogus output and exits 1 with AcceptChangesVerificationError โ tell the user to accept the changes in a desktop Word/LibreOffice session or use LibreOffice 25.x. It never silently hands back an unaccepted copy.
7.7 Raw OOXML editing
python3 scripts/office/unpack.py doc.docx work/ first โ this pretty-prints, merges adjacent runs, and entity-encodes smart quotes, so editing is safe.
Edit XML under work/word/, work/ppt/, or work/xl/ (docx/pptx/xlsx respectively).
python3 scripts/office/pack.py work/ out.docx repackages and reverses the smart-quote entities.
python3 scripts/office/validate.py out.docx confirms basic structural sanity before shipping.
8. Workflows (Optional)
Create a new document from Markdown:
- [ ] Prepare input.md (YAML frontmatter optional)
- [ ] `cd scripts && npm install` if first run
- [ ] `node scripts/md2docx.js input.md output.docx`- [ ] `python3 scripts/office/validate.py output.docx`- [ ] Open in Word/LibreOffice for a spot-check
scripts/office/validators/redlining.py โ RedliningValidator: compare edited .docx against the original, report unmarked deletions/insertions/rewrites and author-attribution gaps. Driven by --compare-to flag on office/validate.py.
scripts/office/shim/ โ LD_PRELOAD / DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES shim that lets LibreOffice start inside seccomp-tightened sandboxes that block AF_UNIX. _soffice.py auto-detects and auto-compiles. See scripts/office/tests/test_shim.md for nsjail/Docker end-to-end validation.
scripts/docx_replace.py โ surgical anchor-and-action editor: --replace/--insert-after/--delete-paragraph without lossy round-trip. Requires docx_anchor.py and _actions.py siblings. Honest scope documented in --help (single-run anchor for --replace; no cross-run anchor spanning format boundaries).
scripts/docx_anchor.py โ anchor utilities: _find_paragraphs_containing_anchor, _merge_adjacent_runs, _replace_in_run. Shared by docx_replace.py and docx_add_comment.py.
scripts/_actions.py โ F2 part-walker (_iter_searchable_parts), F4 _do_replace, F5 _do_insert_after, F6 _do_delete_paragraph; extracted from docx_replace.py at task 006-07a per Q-A1 LOC guardrail.
Extract .docx content back to Markdown preserving tables, lists, and embedded images via docx2md.js. Comments and tracked changes (which mammoth strips) are pulled into a JSON sidecar (<output>.docx2md.json) โ useful for contract audits where the audit trail must accompany the converted markdown. Footnotes/endnotes are converted to pandoc-style [^fn-N] / [^en-N] markers with definitions appended at the end. Schema versioned (v: 1); the sidecar's unsupported field reports counts of revision types not yet captured (rPrChange, pPrChange, moveFrom, moveTo, cellIns, cellDel) so callers know what was lost. Opt-out via --no-metadata (skip sidecar) and --no-footnotes (skip pandoc conversion). Sidecar is not written when the source has no comments, no revisions, and zero unsupported counts โ clean docs stay clean.
Fill .docx templates containing {{placeholder}} or {{nested.key}} markers from a JSON payload with safe run-merging.
Accept all tracked changes in a .docx via headless LibreOffice without leaving artefacts in the user's profile.
Unpack and repack .docx archives for raw OOXML editing, with smart-quote entity round-tripping and run canonicalisation.
Structurally validate a .docx: relationships, content types, tracked-change/<w:delText> integrity, comment marker pairing, package-layout allow-list (every ZIP entry must live under [Content_Types].xml, _rels/, word/, docProps/, or customXml/ per ECMA-376 ยง11.3.10 โ catches scratch-file leaks that Word refuses to open while LibreOffice silently tolerates), and optional XSD binding. With --strict, the package-layout warning is promoted to exit 1.
Reject password-protected and legacy .doc (CFB-container) inputs early with a clear remediation message (exit 3) instead of a BadZipFile traceback.
Detect macro-enabled inputs (.docm, with vbaProject.bin) and warn when the chosen output extension would silently drop the macros (docm โ docx).
Render any .docx/.docm/.pdf (or peer-skill .xlsx/.pptx) into a single PNG-grid preview via preview.py (LibreOffice + Poppler).
Emit failures as machine-readable JSON to stderr with --json-errors (uniform across all four office skills).
Set or remove a password on a .docx/.xlsx/.pptx (MS-OFB Agile, Office 2010+) via office_passwd.py โ three modes: --encrypt PASSWORD, --decrypt PASSWORD, --check (exit 0 encrypted / 10 clean / 11 missing).
Insert a Word review comment anchored on a text substring via docx_add_comment.py โ wires <w:commentRangeStart>/<w:commentRangeEnd>/<w:commentReference> markers, appends to word/comments.xml, and patches [Content_Types].xml + relationships. Supports threaded replies (--parent N) via <w15:commentEx w15:paraIdParent=โฆ> in commentsExtended.xml; reply-to-reply chains are flattened to the conversation root to match Word's review-pane render. Multi-paragraph bodies via \n in --comment are split into separate <w:p> per ECMA-376 ยง17.13.4.2. Opt-in library mode (--unpacked-dir DIR) operates in-place on an already-unpacked tree (skips unpack/pack/encryption-check) โ not reentrant: do not run two processes against the same tree concurrently, no file locking. Malformed OOXML side-parts surface as MalformedOOXML envelope (not a traceback). See references/add-comment-howto.md for verification steps and ยง6 troubleshooting for failure modes.
Merge N .docx files into one via docx_merge.py (VDD iter-2 real-world hardened). Appends body content + styles + numbering + media + relationships into the first input (base), with full reference relocation: image rIds renumbered, r:embed/r:link/r:id in body remapped, <w:bookmarkStart/End w:id> bumped past base's max, <w:abstractNum> / <w:num> shifted with <w:numId w:val> body refs rewritten, missing Default Extension entries pulled into [Content_Types].xml. Strips paragraph-level <w:sectPr> from extras (their header/footer references would dangle). Inserts new <w:abstractNum> BEFORE first <w:num> per ECMA-376 ยง17.9.20 schema-order. Honest scope (still not merged, warned when extras have content): footnotes / endnotes / headers / footers / comments.
commentsExtended.xml
python3 scripts/docx_add_comment.py --unpacked-dir DIR --anchor-text TEXT --comment BODY [...] โ library mode: edit an already-unpacked tree in-place (combine with --parent to add a reply over the same tree).
python3 scripts/docx_replace.py INPUT.docx OUTPUT.docx --anchor TEXT (--replace TEXT | --insert-after PATH_OR_DASH | --delete-paragraph) [--all] [--unpacked-dir DIR] [--scope=LIST] [--json-errors] โ Tier B (script-first); positional INPUT OUTPUT; --anchor TEXT is always required; exactly one of --replace/--insert-after/--delete-paragraph is required (mutex). --all replaces/acts on every match instead of first. --unpacked-dir DIR operates on an already-unpacked tree in-place (library mode โ skips unpack/pack/encryption-check). --insert-after - reads the markdown body from stdin. --scope=LIST (docx-6.7) restricts anchor-search to a subset of OOXML parts: comma-separated body, headers, footers, footnotes, endnotes, all (default: all). Example: --scope=body limits edits to word/document.xml, leaving header/footer boilerplate untouched. Order within the requested set is deterministic (document โ headers โ footers โ footnotes โ endnotes). Exit codes: 0 success, 1 I/O or OOXML error, 2 anchor-not-found / last-paragraph-delete refused / invalid --scope value, 3 encrypted/password-protected input, 6 same-path self-overwrite refused, 7 post-validate failure. --json-errors emits failures as {v:1, error, code, type, details} JSON on stderr (cross-5 envelope parity). Honest scope: --replace anchor must fit within a single <w:t> after run-merge; --insert-after converts markdown to OOXML via md2docx.js (requires Node.js in PATH).
All scripts above accept --json-errors to emit failures as a single line of JSON on stderr ({v, error, code, type?, details?}). The schema version v is currently 1; argparse usage errors are routed through the same envelope (type:"UsageError").
Inputs: positional paths only; optional flags per command.
Outputs: a single file at the named output path; office/unpack.py produces a directory tree; office/validate.py prints a report (or JSON with --json). docx2md.js additionally creates <stem>_images/ next to the Markdown output when the document has embedded images.
Failure semantics: non-zero exit on missing input, invalid JSON, unresolved placeholders (with --strict), unreadable ZIP, or soffice errors. Error detail goes to stderr.
Idempotency: repeated runs with the same inputs produce equivalent output files (byte-exact for the XML parts after pretty-print and entity normalisation). docx_accept_changes.py is idempotent on an already-accepted document. Exception: office_passwd.py --encrypt is intentionally non-deterministic โ Office encryption uses a fresh random salt per run, so the encrypted bytes differ each time even with the same password. The decrypted output, however, is byte-equal to the pre-encryption input (lossless round-trip).
Dry-run support: not applicable; operations are file-to-file and reversible by re-running.
/tmp/repack.docx
examples/fixture-simple.md
CI signal: python3 ../../.claude/skills/skill-creator/scripts/validate_skill.py skills/docx โ exits 0 when the skill conforms to the Gold Standard (frontmatter, required sections, non-empty examples).
python3 scripts/docx_replace.py in.docx out.docx --anchor "phrase" --replace "new text"
scripts/preview.py โ universal INPUT โ PNG-grid renderer for .docx/.docm/.xlsx/.pptx/.pdf. Byte-identical across all four office skills.
scripts/office_passwd.py โ set / remove / detect password protection on .docx/.xlsx/.pptx via msoffcrypto-tool (MS-OFB Agile, Office 2010+). Byte-identical across the three OOXML skills (not pdf โ pdf has its own AcroForm encryption). Pass - as the password to read it from stdin (avoids leaking via ps/shell history).
scripts/_errors.py โ --json-errors envelope helper used by every Python CLI. Schema-versioned (v=1); routes argparse usage errors through the same envelope as domain errors.
scripts/_soffice.py โ LibreOffice subprocess wrapper with sandbox-aware AF_UNIX shim auto-load.
scripts/office/ โ OOXML unpack/pack/validate utilities; byte-identically replicated to xlsx and pptx skills (docx is master โ see CLAUDE.md ยง2 for the protocol).
scripts/office/_encryption.py โ CFB-magic detection: rejects password-protected and legacy .doc/.xls/.ppt files with exit 3 + remediation hint.
scripts/office/_macros.py โ XML-aware macro detection (Default/Override ContentType in [Content_Types].xml); writer scripts warn when output extension drops the macros.
