powerpoint-cli

A standalone CLI for creating and editing PowerPoint (.pptx) files, wrapping office-powerpoint-mcp-server via mcporter.

The original project is an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server for PowerPoint manipulation. This repo packages it as a CLI so it can be used directly from the command line or as an Agent Skills-compatible skill — without loading 37 tool schemas into agent context.

What it does

• Create presentations from scratch or from templates
• Add slides, text, bullet points, images, tables, charts, shapes, connectors
• Apply professional themes and color schemes
• Auto-generate presentations from a topic
• Extract text and inspect slide structure
• Manage hyperlinks, transitions, fonts, and document properties

What it doesn't do

• Open or display presentations in a GUI
• Convert to/from PDF or other formats
• Handle animations or video/audio embeds
• Edit existing text in-place (you can add new text or replace placeholders)

Requirements

• Bun runtime
• uv (for the underlying Python MCP server, installed on first run)

Installation

# Install bun if needed
curl -fsSL https://bun.sh/install | bash

# Install uv if needed
curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

# Clone
git clone https://github.com/tmustier/powerpoint-cli.git

As a pi skill

git clone https://github.com/tmustier/powerpoint-cli.git ~/.pi/agent/skills/powerpoint

The skill auto-loads when you ask your agent to work with PowerPoint files.

Usage

Batch mode (for multi-step workflows)

The server is stateful — create, build, then save. Use the batch runner:

echo '{
  "commands": [
    { "tool": "create_presentation" },
    { "tool": "add_slide", "args": { "title": "Hello World" } },
    { "tool": "manage_text", "args": {
      "slide_index": 0, "operation": "add",
      "left": 1, "top": 2, "width": 8, "height": 1,
      "text": "Welcome!", "font_size": 24
    }},
    { "tool": "save_presentation", "args": { "file_path": "./output.pptx" } }
  ]
}' | bun powerpoint-batch.ts

Also accepts a file or --recipe flag:

bun powerpoint-batch.ts recipe.json
bun powerpoint-batch.ts --recipe '{"commands": [...]}'

The batch runner auto-tracks presentation_id across commands.

Single-command mode

For one-off or read-only operations:

bun powerpoint-cli.js list-slide-templates
bun powerpoint-cli.js get-template-info --template-id title_slide
bun powerpoint-cli.js --help

See SKILL.md for the full tool reference with all arguments.

How it works

powerpoint-cli.js is generated by mcporter generate-cli. It spawns office-powerpoint-mcp-server as a subprocess over stdio and translates CLI flags / JSON into MCP tool calls.

powerpoint-batch.ts keeps a single server session alive across multiple commands, working around a known upstream bug where create_presentation doesn't set the active presentation ID (the wrapper that would do this is defined but never applied).

Regenerating

npx mcporter generate-cli \
  --command "uvx --from office-powerpoint-mcp-server ppt_mcp_server" \
  --name powerpoint \
  --output powerpoint-cli.ts \
  --bundle powerpoint-cli.js

Known issues

The upstream MCP server has a state persistence bug with stdio transport: create_presentation stores the presentation in memory but never sets it as the active one (the wrapper code for this exists but is never applied). Some MCP clients also respawn the stdio process per call, losing state entirely.

The batch runner (powerpoint-batch.ts) works around both problems by keeping a single server process alive for the full session and auto-injecting presentation_id into subsequent commands. If you use powerpoint-cli.js directly, each invocation is independent — use it only for stateless/read-only commands.

License

MIT