How to use the OfficeCLI Word Documents agent skill

What the officecli-docx skill makes the agent do

Without the skill, an agent may produce plain or less reliable Word files. With it, the agent knows how to work with .docx files through the officecli tool. The skill covers creating Word documents, reports, letters, memos and proposals; reading or extracting text from a .docx file; and editing existing documents, including templates, tracked changes, comments, headers and footers, and tables of contents.

The skill guides the agent to build documents with a proper heading hierarchy, consistent fonts and spacing, page numbers and tables of contents. It also asks the agent to check its work by rendering the document as HTML before declaring it finished.

Install the officecli-docx skill

The skill is distributed as a ZIP file from this page. You can install it in one of two ways. For Claude Code, unzip the download into ~/.claude/skills/ for all your projects, or into a project's .claude/skills/ folder for one project. In the Claude apps, you can instead upload the ZIP under Settings → Capabilities → Skills.

The skill also depends on the officecli command-line tool. The source says it is installed via curl or PowerShell from d.officecli.ai, or downloaded from GitHub releases. If the agent finds officecli missing, the skill's setup section offers these commands.

• macOS / Linux: curl -fsSL https://d.officecli.ai/install.sh | bash
• Windows (PowerShell): irm https://d.officecli.ai/install.ps1 | iex
• Check the install with officecli --version (open a new terminal if PATH has not updated)
• If installation fails, download a binary from https://github.com/iOfficeAI/OfficeCLI/releases

How to trigger the skill with natural requests

You do not need to name the skill. The skill is meant to activate whenever a .docx file is involved, as input, output or both. The source says it triggers on mentions of a 'Word doc', 'document', 'report', 'letter', 'memo', or a .docx filename. Plain requests are enough, and you can name the file you want changed.

• Write a two-page project status report for the Q3 pilot and save it as status.docx
• Draft a formal letter to a supplier and add page numbers in the footer
• Read the text out of contract-draft.docx and summarise the payment terms
• Edit proposal.docx so every heading uses the same style and add a table of contents
• Add tracked changes to memo.docx for the section on travel policy

What the agent does while working

The skill describes a build order: open the file, look at its structure, build headings and body text, format to a specification, save, and then verify. For existing files, the agent is told to inspect the outline before editing rather than edit blind. For new documents, it sets heading sizes, body font and spacing explicitly when it cannot trust the template's styles.

Page numbers are meant to be live PAGE fields rather than typed text such as 'Page 1'. The skill also tells the agent to keep to one readable body font and one accent colour, and to avoid placeholder tokens like {name} appearing in finished text.

• Headings: Title, then Heading 1, then Heading 2, then body text
• Body text roughly 11 to 12pt with line spacing of 1.15 to 1.5
• A table of contents when the document has three or more headings
• Headers and footers with page numbers on any document longer than one page

Safety notes: scripts and network access

This skill runs scripts and uses the network. The setup pulls and runs an installer script from the internet, and the officecli tool is needed for every task. Before you install, read the install script yourself and confirm you trust its source. The source also warns against using this skill with sensitive or confidential documents until you have reviewed what the installer and the tool send or change.

Run the agent in an environment where you can see its shell commands. The skill asks the agent to run commands one at a time and check each exit code, which makes it easier to spot a failure.

• Review the install script before running it
• Keep confidential files out of the workflow until you understand what the tool does with them
• Watch the commands the agent runs in the terminal

Tips for better results

Be specific about the document type, length and audience. If you have an existing template, point the agent to it so it can match the existing look, since the skill says existing conventions override its default guidelines. Ask the agent to show you the outline or the rendered HTML before you accept the file.

• Name the output file, for example proposal-v2.docx
• Attach or name the template you want matched
• Ask for a table of contents and page numbers explicitly if the document is long
• Ask the agent to check the rendered HTML for leftover placeholders or cut-off titles