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OfficeCLI: Office suite for AI agents to read and edit Microsoft Office files

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41–50 of 68 posts

Re: OfficeCLI: Office suite for AI agents to read and edit Microsoft Office files

#41

Feel 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?

Office documents have been notoriously difficult to automate for years. I think old .doc files were just a memory dump

Re: OfficeCLI: Office suite for AI agents to read and edit Microsoft Office files

#42
post #33
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI 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.

I don't think so. I have had a lot of experience creating and editing PowerPoint slides with Claude recently. It always converts the file to a PDF using LibreOffice and then renders the PDF into images to see if everything went right and that no text has overflowed.

That’s probably because you have (or implicitly created) a skill that does that. My agents know how to check bounding boxes.

Re: OfficeCLI: Office suite for AI agents to read and edit Microsoft Office files

#43
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI 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.

while 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

Yes, but automatically generated content doesn’t need to do that - like I wrote in another comment, my agents know how to check bounding boxes.

Re: OfficeCLI: Office suite for AI agents to read and edit Microsoft Office files

#44
post #4

I went in the opposite direction and built 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 Discord: https://discord.gg/txjATTsDaq Sample document: https://smalldocs.org/blogs/what-is-a-smalldoc Invoked via Claude Code by saying stuff like:…

I find it so amusing that small dev's get it so right, yeh a trillion dollar company can't figure out what copilot is to their ecosystem.

Re: OfficeCLI: Office suite for AI agents to read and edit Microsoft Office files

#45
post #4

I went in the opposite direction and built 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 Discord: https://discord.gg/txjATTsDaq Sample document: https://smalldocs.org/blogs/what-is-a-smalldoc Invoked via Claude Code by saying stuff like:…

> Elastic License 2.0. The source is public and you may use, copy, modify, and redistribute it. You may not offer SmallDocs to third parties as a hosted or managed service, strip its licensing notices, or circumvent its license-key functionality.

It is not open source unfortunately.

Re: OfficeCLI: Office suite for AI agents to read and edit Microsoft Office files

#46

Feel 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?

The idea of Latex being used in business environments could be a meme

Re: OfficeCLI: Office suite for AI agents to read and edit Microsoft Office files

#47
post #45
post #4

I went in the opposite direction and built 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 Discord: https://discord.gg/txjATTsDaq Sample document: https://smalldocs.org/blogs/what-is-a-smalldoc Invoked via Claude Code by saying stuff like:…

> Elastic License 2.0. The source is public and you may use, copy, modify, and redistribute it. You may not offer SmallDocs to third parties as a hosted or managed service, strip its licensing notices, or circumvent its license-key functionality. It is not open source unfortunately.

I posted the same thing below, but I’m open for feedback on the license. I’ve put a lot of work in and I think there is a commercial pathway forward for the product. I don’t want to let someone else - who might be more experienced re commercialisation - take everything I’ve done and build a business with it (I’d really like to do that myself), so wasn’t sure what license to use as MIT didn’t feel right to me at the moment. But open for feedback/maybe I’m being too short sighted…

Re: OfficeCLI: Office suite for AI agents to read and edit Microsoft Office files

#48
post #4

I went in the opposite direction and built 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 Discord: https://discord.gg/txjATTsDaq Sample document: https://smalldocs.org/blogs/what-is-a-smalldoc Invoked via Claude Code by saying stuff like:…

I find it so amusing that small dev's get it so right, yeh a trillion dollar company can't figure out what copilot is to their ecosystem.

Thanks!

Re: OfficeCLI: Office suite for AI agents to read and edit Microsoft Office files

#50
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Elastic License 2.0. The source is public and you may use, copy, modify, and redistribute it. You may not offer SmallDocs to third parties as a hosted or managed service, strip its licensing notices, or circumvent its license-key functionality. It is not open source unfortunately.

I posted the same thing below, but I’m open for feedback on the license. I’ve put a lot of work in and I think there is a commercial pathway forward for the product. I don’t want to let someone else - who might be more experienced re commercialisation - take everything I’ve done and build a business with it (I’d really like to do that myself), so wasn’t sure what license to use as MIT didn’t feel right to me at the m…

I don’t see why your license should be open source. It’s alright what you have.
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