| name | docx |
| description | Use this skill whenever the user wants to create, read, edit, or manipulate Word documents (.docx files) or Word templates (.dotx files). Triggers include: any mention of 'Word doc', 'word document', '.docx', '.dotx', or requests to produce professional documents with formatting like tables of contents, headings, page numbers, or letterheads. Also use when extracting or reorganizing content from .docx or .dotx files, inserting or replacing images in documents, performing find-and-replace in Word files, working with tracked changes or comments, or converting content into a polished Word document. If the user asks for a 'report', 'memo', 'letter', 'template', or similar deliverable as a Word or .docx file, use this skill. Do NOT use for PDFs, spreadsheets, Google Docs, or general coding tasks unrelated to document generation. |
| license | Proprietary. LICENSE.txt has complete terms |
DOCX creation, editing, and analysis
A .docx is a ZIP archive of XML files. Choose your approach by task:
| Task | Approach |
|---|
| Create a new document | Write a docx (npm) script — see gotchas below |
| Edit an existing document | unzip → edit word/document.xml → zip (docx-js cannot open existing files) |
| Read content | pandoc -t markdown file.docx |
Script paths below are relative to this skill's directory.
Creating with docx-js — gotchas
docx is preinstalled — do not run npm install first; write the script and require('docx') directly. Only if that require fails: npm install docx. The model knows the API; these are the footguns:
- Page size defaults to A4. For US Letter set
page: { size: { width: 12240, height: 15840 } } (DXA; 1440 = 1″).
- Landscape: pass portrait dimensions and
orientation: PageOrientation.LANDSCAPE — docx-js swaps width/height internally.
- Tables need dual widths: set
columnWidths on the table AND width on every cell, both in WidthType.DXA (PERCENTAGE breaks in Google Docs). Column widths must sum to the table width.
- Table shading: use
ShadingType.CLEAR, never SOLID (renders black).
- Lists: never insert
• literally; use a numbering config with LevelFormat.BULLET.
ImageRun requires type: ("png", "jpg", …).PageBreak must be inside a Paragraph.- Never use
\n — use separate Paragraph elements.
- TOC: headings must use built-in
HeadingLevel.*; custom heading styles need outlineLevel set or they won't appear.
- Don't use a table as a horizontal rule — use a paragraph bottom border instead.
- Dot-leader / right-aligned-on-same-line: use
PositionalTab (alignment: PositionalTabAlignment.RIGHT, leader: PositionalTabLeader.DOT) inside a TextRun, not literal . or space padding.
Verify the output
After writing a .docx, render it and look at it:
python scripts/office/soffice.py --headless --convert-to pdf output.docx
pdftoppm -jpeg -r 100 output.pdf page
ls page-*.jpg
pdftoppm zero-pads page numbers to the width of the page count (page-01.jpg…page-12.jpg).
Editing existing documents
Legacy .doc files must be converted first: python scripts/office/soffice.py --headless --convert-to docx file.doc.
unzip -q doc.docx -d unpacked/
find unpacked -type l -delete
python scripts/merge_runs.py unpacked/
(cd unpacked && rm -f ../out.docx && zip -Xr ../out.docx .)
python scripts/office/validate.py out.docx --original doc.docx
Word splits text across many <w:r> runs (revision ids, spell-check markers), so a phrase you can see in the document often doesn't exist as a contiguous string in the XML. merge_runs.py merges adjacent identically-formatted runs in word/document.xml without changing content or rendering; it also accepts a .docx directly (python scripts/merge_runs.py doc.docx -o merged.docx).
Tracked changes: when redlining, validate with --author "<the name you redlined under>" (needs --original) — it reports any text you changed without a <w:ins>/<w:del> around it, which is easy to do by accident and invisible in the accepted view. Wrap runs in <w:ins>/<w:del> with w:id, w:author, w:date attributes. Inside <w:del>, the text element is <w:delText>, not <w:t>. A deleted paragraph mark (<w:pPr><w:rPr><w:del w:id=".." w:author=".." w:date=".."/></w:rPr></w:pPr>) means "merge this paragraph into the next" — so deleting a paragraph outright is that plus a <w:del> around every run. The <w:del/> must come before the rPr's other children; their order is schema-enforced.
To produce a clean copy with all tracked changes accepted: python scripts/accept_changes.py in.docx out.docx.
Accepting a deleted paragraph mark should join that paragraph to the one below it, so a paragraph whose runs are all deleted vanishes. Word does this; accept_changes.py and pandoc --track-changes=accept don't always. Both fail the same way — they strip the deleted text but leave the emptied paragraph behind, which reads as a stray empty bullet when it was auto-numbered:
pandoc --track-changes=accept never joins the paragraphs.accept_changes.py (LibreOffice) joins them correctly, except when the deleted paragraph is followed by an empty spacer paragraph.
An empty bullet in either view is an artifact of that view, not a defect in the document. Check paragraph deletions in the XML.
Comments
Comments require six cross-linked files. Use the helper — directory mode when you'll also be editing document.xml (saves an unzip/rezip cycle), .docx-direct mode otherwise:
python scripts/comment.py unpacked/ "Fees & expenses cap is too low"
python scripts/comment.py unpacked/ "Agreed" --parent 0
python scripts/comment.py contract.docx "This cap is too low" -o annotated.docx
The script writes comments.xml, commentsExtended.xml, commentsIds.xml, commentsExtensible.xml, the relationships, and the content-type overrides. Comment IDs are auto-assigned. It then prints the <w:commentRangeStart>/<w:commentRangeEnd>/<w:commentReference> snippet to add to word/document.xml so the comment anchors to specific text — until you place those markers, the comment exists but is not visible.
Dependencies
docx (npm, preinstalled — install only if require('docx') fails) · pandoc · LibreOffice (soffice) · pdftoppm (Poppler)
