Skills ppt-editing-skill
📦

ppt-editing-skill

Low Risk ⚙️ External commands📁 Filesystem access

Edit PowerPoint presentations and templates

Manually editing PowerPoint files is slow and error-prone, especially for template-based workflows. This skill enables AI agents to safely modify PPTX files by directly editing slide XML, supporting parallel updates and consistent template adherence.

Supports: Claude Codex Code(CC)
📊 71 Adequate
1

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Upload in Claude

Go to Settings → Capabilities → Skills → Upload skill

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Test it

Using "ppt-editing-skill". A template.pptx with 10 placeholder slides and new content for a product launch deck

Expected outcome:

  • template.pptx preserved as the original unmodified copy
  • unpacked/ directory containing editable XML for all 10 slides
  • edited.pptx with all placeholders replaced by product launch content, validated and ready for delivery

Using "ppt-editing-skill". A slide with a 4-member team layout but only 3 team members to include

Expected outcome:

  • The fourth team member group (image and text boxes) removed entirely
  • No orphaned image references remain in the slide XML
  • Remaining 3 members retain original formatting and alignment

Security Audit

Low Risk
v1 • 4/16/2026

Static analyzer flagged 75 patterns, but all are false positives. The 55 external_commands flags misidentified markdown code fence delimiters as Ruby backtick execution. The 4 path traversal flags misread XML formatting examples. The 14 weak crypto flags misidentified XML hex entity references. Real risks are limited to expected external command usage (cp, python, markitdown) and filesystem access for PPTX unpacking and repacking, both legitimate for this skill's purpose.

1
Files scanned
194
Lines analyzed
4
findings
1
Total audits
Low Risk Issues (2)
SKILL.md:14-17SKILL.md:54-56SKILL.md:74-77
External Command Execution
Skill instructs agents to run shell commands (cp, python -m markitdown) and reference Python scripts (unpack.py, add_slide.py, clean.py, pack.py) for PPTX manipulation. Commands are hardcoded with no user input injection vectors.
SKILL.md:15SKILL.md:55SKILL.md:83
Filesystem Read and Write Access
Skill reads user-provided PPTX files and writes to the working directory and /tmp/ for intermediate processing. File paths are user-provided but operations are limited to copy, extract, and repack PPTX archives.

Risk Factors

⚙️ External commands (3)
SKILL.md:14-17 SKILL.md:54-56 SKILL.md:74-77
📁 Filesystem access (3)
SKILL.md:83 SKILL.md:15 SKILL.md:55
Audited by: claude

Quality Score

38
Architecture
100
Maintainability
87
Content
50
Community
86
Security
91
Spec Compliance

What You Can Build

Corporate Template Updates

Update branded presentation templates with new company information, team members, and quarterly data while preserving corporate design guidelines.

Bulk Deck Customization

Customize a master presentation for multiple audiences by duplicating slide decks and replacing content sections for each recipient group.

Template Compliance Review

Analyze existing presentations to ensure they follow organizational layout standards and identify slides that deviate from approved templates.

Try These Prompts

Analyze a presentation template 
I have a PowerPoint template at /path/to/template.pptx. Analyze its slide layouts, available placeholders, and design patterns so I can plan content insertion.
Update text content in slides 
I need to replace all placeholder text in template.pptx with new content for a quarterly business review. Preserve the existing slide order and formatting styles.
Reorganize slide structure 
Reorder the slides in template.pptx so the executive summary comes first, remove slides 5 and 7, and duplicate slide 3 for a second use case example.
Parallel multi-slide content replacement 
I have a 20-slide template. Replace placeholder content across all slides with the attached data. Use subagents to edit each slide XML file in parallel, then repack and validate the output.

Best Practices

  • Always copy the original file before editing so the source presentation remains unmodified
  • Use varied slide layouts to avoid monotonous, text-heavy presentations
  • Run clean.py after deleting slides to remove orphaned assets and broken relationships

Avoid

  • Never manually copy slide XML files, as this breaks relationship IDs and Content_Types references
  • Do not concatenate multiple list items into a single paragraph element in slide XML
  • Avoid clearing only text content without removing associated images or shapes from templates

Frequently Asked Questions

Can this skill create a PowerPoint from scratch?
No. This skill is designed for editing existing PPTX files or templates. You need a source presentation to work with.
Why does the skill write to /tmp/ before the final path?
Python's zipfile module uses seek internally, which fails on some volume mounts such as Docker bind mounts. Writing to /tmp/ first avoids this issue.
How are slide images handled during editing?
Images are preserved during unpacking and repacking. When removing content, delete entire element groups (image plus text boxes) to avoid orphaned references.
Can multiple slides be edited at the same time?
Yes. Each slide is a separate XML file, so subagents can edit different slides in parallel after structural changes are complete.
What happens to slide notes during editing?
The add_slide.py script handles notes references automatically. Notes are preserved during standard text editing operations.
Why use defusedxml instead of the standard ElementTree?
The standard xml.etree.ElementTree corrupts PowerPoint XML namespaces. defusedxml.minidom preserves namespace integrity during parsing and editing.

Developer Details

Author

MiniMax-AI

License

Proprietary. LICENSE.txt has complete terms

Repository

https://github.com/MiniMax-AI/skills/tree/main/plugins/pptx-plugin/skills/ppt-editing-skill

Ref

main

File structure

📄 SKILL.md