Word Document Skill

Under the hood, .docx is a ZIP container holding XML parts. Creation, reading, and modification all operate on this XML structure.

Visual and typographic standards: Consult skills/design-foundations/SKILL.md for color palette, typeface selection, and layout principles (single accent color with neutral tones, no decorative graphics, WCAG-compliant contrast). Use widely available sans-serif typefaces like Arial or Calibri as your baseline.

Choosing an approach

Objective	Technique	Reference
Create a document from scratch	`docx` npm module (JavaScript)	See CREATION.md
Edit an existing file	Unpack to XML, modify, repack	See EDITING.md
Pull out text	`pandoc document.docx -o output.md`	Append `--track-changes=all` for redline content
Handle legacy .doc format	`soffice --headless --convert-to docx file.doc`	Convert before any XML work
Rebuild from a PDF	Run `pdf2docx`, then patch issues	See below
Export pages as images	`soffice` to PDF, then `pdftoppm`	See below
Flatten tracked changes	`python skills/docx/scripts/accept_changes.py in.docx out.docx`	Requires LibreOffice

All tools referenced above (pandoc, soffice, pdftoppm, docx npm module, pdf2docx) are pre-installed in the sandbox.