Create and edit office artifacts with ak:document-skills

Use ak:document-skills to read, create, edit, or analyze PDF, XLSX, DOCX, and PPTX artifacts. The parent Skill routes the task into four bundled format subskills and their scripts, references, schemas, and validation workflows.

Choose ak:document-skills for file artifacts

Use ak:document-skills when

• You need a PDF generated, merged, split, extracted, rendered, or filled.
• You need an XLSX workbook or CSV/TSV analysis with formulas, formatting, charts, or recalculated values.
• You need a DOCX document created, analyzed, edited, commented, or redlined while preserving reviewable change history.
• You need a PPTX deck created, inspected, adapted from a template, edited, or rendered for visual review.
• One deliverable spans formats, such as a workbook feeding a reviewed slide deck and a final PDF export.

Choose another workflow when

• You only need prose in Markdown. Use ak:docs or ak:interview-docs and avoid an Office container.
• You need application code that imports or exports documents. Use the relevant development Skill; this workflow focuses on the artifacts themselves.
• You need live control of a desktop Office application or cloud document. Choose a runtime capability that explicitly provides that session.
• You cannot inspect a rendered result. Do not claim layout fidelity from XML, extracted text, or formulas alone.

Understand the nested format boundary

ak:document-skills physically includes ak:pdf, ak:xlsx, ak:docx, and ak:pptx. They are nested implementation guidance, not individually registered top-level Engineer exports. Invoke the parent Skill and name the format and outcome; do not assume /ak:pdf, /ak:xlsx, /ak:docx, or /ak:pptx is a separately installed command.

Prepare inputs, tools, and output boundaries

Before you start:

• Complete Onboarding, and confirm Engineer Kit is installed for the current runtime and scope.
• Provide source files, expected output format and path, intended audience, required content, template or brand constraints, and whether originals may be overwritten. Prefer a new output file.
• State whether comments, tracked changes, formulas, external links, macros, metadata, speaker notes, animations, accessibility tags, or form fields must be preserved.
• Supply authoritative data and content. Identify confidential, personal, regulated, licensed, or password-protected inputs before processing.
• Make the required tools available or approve installation separately. Depending on the route, these can include Python, Node.js, pandas, openpyxl, pypdf, pdfplumber, reportlab, Pandoc, MarkItDown, docx, PptxGenJS, Playwright, Sharp, LibreOffice, Poppler, qpdf, OCR tools, and defusedxml.

The parent Skill declares no positional arguments, flags, or default output directory. Give it the exact source, target, requested operation, preservation requirements, and verification standard.

Run a format-aware request

/ak:document-skills "Create board-report.xlsx from approved-metrics.csv with formulas for totals and growth, preserve source precision, add a Sources sheet, recalculate with LibreOffice, scan every formula result for errors, and save to ./deliverables without changing the CSV."

/ak:document-skills "Create board-report.xlsx from approved-metrics.csv with formulas for totals and growth, preserve source precision, add a Sources sheet, recalculate with LibreOffice, scan every formula result for errors, and save to ./deliverables without changing the CSV."

$ak:document-skills "Create board-report.xlsx from approved-metrics.csv with formulas for totals and growth, preserve source precision, add a Sources sheet, recalculate with LibreOffice, scan every formula result for errors, and save to ./deliverables without changing the CSV."

For a redline, name the review boundary explicitly: preserve the original DOCX, make only the approved textual changes as tracked changes, retain comments and formatting, render every page, and return both the reviewed file and a change ledger. For a deck, include aspect ratio, template, slide count, audience, speaker-note requirements, approved assets, and the thumbnail or rendered-slide review you expect.

Observe the artifact workflow

1. The Skill classifies the task. It selects PDF, spreadsheet, Word, or PowerPoint guidance and identifies whether the work is read-only, creation, editing, redlining, template reuse, or form filling.
2. It inspects before changing. It extracts text or data, inventories pages, sheets, slides, fields, relationships, and formatting, and records what must survive the transformation.
3. It loads the required nested guidance. DOCX and PPTX creation or OOXML editing require their full referenced guides before implementation. PDF form work branches only after checking whether real fields exist.
4. It creates a separate working artifact. The workflow uses structured source, unpacked OOXML, HTML slides, JSON inventories, rendered pages, or other intermediates appropriate to the format.
5. It validates semantics and structure. Formulas, references, fields, tracked changes, slide shapes, package relationships, and requested content are checked before visual judgment.
6. It renders and inspects when layout matters. Pages, slides, forms, overflow, contrast, clipping, and unintended shifts are reviewed and fixed.
7. It delivers evidence. The final report names outputs, intermediates, checks, preserved features, mutations, dependencies, and remaining gaps.

Know the files each route can create

PDF forms have two distinct routes. Fillable forms extract declared fields and validate field IDs and values before writing a new PDF. Non-fillable forms use page images, label and entry bounding boxes, automated intersection checks, manual validation-image review, and text annotations. A visual guess without those checks is not a verified filled form.

For spreadsheets, formulas must remain formulas rather than Python-calculated hardcodes. The packaged recalc.py uses LibreOffice to recalculate the workbook, then scans all cells for #VALUE!, #DIV/0!, #REF!, #NAME?, #NULL!, #NUM!, and #N/A. Its JSON reports status, error count, bounded locations, and formula count. On first use it may initialize LibreOffice and write Module1.xba into the user's LibreOffice profile.

Keep document mutations and sensitive data controlled

• Do not remove encryption, signatures, protection, macros, external links, or metadata unless the user owns the file and explicitly authorizes that change.
• Treat comments, tracked changes, hidden sheets, speaker notes, embedded media, formulas, links, and document properties as potentially sensitive even when they are not visible in the main view.
• Do not send files to OCR, conversion, font, image, or cloud services without approval. The bundled guidance is local-first but does not make every dependency local or already installed.
• Template slide replacement can clear every inventoried text shape that lacks replacement paragraphs. Review the complete inventory and work on a duplicate.
• Opening an XLSX with data_only=True and saving it can replace formulas with cached values. Keep formula-preserving and value-reading passes separate.
• Never overwrite the only copy of a source artifact. Commit, upload, email, publish, print, or share the deliverable only through a separately authorized action.

Verify outputs and evidence

A complete result should include:

• Exact source and final artifact paths, formats, sizes, page, sheet, or slide counts, and a checksum when integrity matters.
• All intermediate directories and files that remain, plus any temporary files removed and local profile changes made by tools.
• Content checks: extracted text, table or data reconciliation, formula counts and errors, field mappings, tracked-change ledger, slide inventory, and speaker-note or comment preservation as applicable.
• Structural checks: package validation, relationships, formulas, named ranges, fields, references, and openability in the selected format.
• Visual evidence from rendered pages, slides, thumbnails, or validation images, with clipping, overlap, overflow, contrast, pagination, and font substitution assessed where relevant.
• Explicit gaps when Office applications, fonts, converters, OCR, browser engines, passwords, source assets, or human review were unavailable.

The pinned stable and beta releases contain the same parent and nested document trees. The parent description does not itself guarantee that all dependencies are installed or that every advanced Office feature round-trips losslessly.

Troubleshoot and interpret limits

Use ak:docs for Markdown-first documentation and review Projects, artifacts, and checkpoints before a large or destructive artifact transformation.