The Claude PowerPoint skill (pptx): what it does and how to install it

Source: anthropics/skills · Maintainer: Anthropic · License: Proprietary (source-available) · Checked: 23 October 2026

What is the Claude PowerPoint skill?

The Claude PowerPoint skill, named pptx, is Anthropic's Agent Skill for presentations: it lets Claude build new slide decks, edit existing ones, fill in templates and pull text out of .pptx and .potx files. It is for anyone who wants a real deck they can open in PowerPoint, with layouts, charts and speaker notes, rather than an outline.

It is one of the four document skills that the anthropics/skills README says power Claude's document capabilities, next to pdf, docx and xlsx. Its trigger is wide. The description lists creating decks and pitch decks, extracting text even when it will be used elsewhere, editing presentations, combining or splitting slide files, and working with templates, layouts, speaker notes or comments. It closes: "If a .pptx or .potx file needs to be opened, created, or touched, use this skill."

So saying "deck", "slides" or "presentation", or naming a .pptx file, is enough for Claude to load it.

What does the PowerPoint skill do?

The SKILL.md is the longest of the four document skills. It splits work three ways:

Creating decks. It lists the pptxgenjs mistakes that corrupt files or look wrong: set the layout before adding slides (the default 16:9 canvas is 10 by 5.625 inches), never put # or alpha in hex colors, don't share option objects between calls, use bullet: true instead of literal bullets, put speaker notes in slide.addNotes(), and keep charts native with addChart(). After writing, Claude runs validate.py.

Editing and templates. Claude makes a labeled thumbnail grid of a template, maps each section to a layout, does all structural changes (add, delete, reorder) first with add_slide.py and clean.py, then edits slide text. One rule stands out: when the template shows four team members and you have three, delete the whole fourth group, not just its text.

Design guidance. A "Design Ideas" section pushes for a topic-specific palette with one dominant color, a repeated visual motif, a visual element on every slide, and safe fonts like Arial and Calibri so the preview matches what PowerPoint shows. It bans accent lines under titles, which it calls "a hallmark of AI-generated slides," and decorative color bars or accent stripes.

QA is required. Claude checks content with markitdown, greps for leftover placeholder text, validates the file, then renders slides to images with LibreOffice and Poppler and inspects each one for overflow, overlap, spacing and contrast.

What's in the folder:

• SKILL.md: the instructions above.
• scripts/thumbnail.py: a labeled grid of every slide, for choosing template layouts.
• scripts/add_slide.py: duplicates a slide or layout with all the package bookkeeping.
• scripts/clean.py: removes slides, media and relationships no longer used.
• scripts/office/: validate.py (schema, relationship, chart and slide checks), soffice.py (a LibreOffice wrapper), validators, helpers and Office XML schemas.

How do you install the PowerPoint skill?

Use any one of these documented routes.

In the Claude app. Anthropic's Use skills in Claude article lists "PowerPoint presentation generation" as a built-in skill, with skills available on Free, Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise plans. Turn on Code execution and file creation in Settings, Capabilities. The article's own example is asking Claude to "Create a PowerPoint presentation about Q3 results."

In Claude Code, signed in with claude.ai. The Claude Code skills docs say signed-in terminal sessions (v2.1.273 or later) sync your claude.ai account's skills, including Anthropic's built-in ones, into ~/.claude/skills/synced/. The docs name pdf and xlsx as always syncing; if pptx doesn't appear under claude.ai sync in /skills, check it is turned on in Customize, Skills on claude.ai. Anthropic's Agent Skills overview still says the pre-built document skills are not available in Claude Code, so if pptx doesn't appear, use the plugin route below.

As a Claude Code plugin. From the README, in a session:

/plugin marketplace add anthropics/skills
/plugin install document-skills@anthropic-agent-skills

This installs pptx with docx, xlsx and pdf. Call it directly as /document-skills:pptx.

With the skills CLI. From its skills.sh page:

npx skills add https://github.com/anthropics/skills --skill pptx

Add -a claude-code for Claude Code. The folder goes to .claude/skills/pptx/ in your project, or ~/.claude/skills/pptx/ with -g. Codex and Cursor read the same SKILL.md format (Codex skills, Cursor skills), but read the license notes below first.

Through the API. Use skill_id pptx with the code execution tool, as described in the Agent Skills overview.

How do you use the PowerPoint skill?

Describe the deck, the audience and any source files. Requests like these fit:

• "Make a 10-slide pitch deck from this one-pager, with speaker notes on every slide."
• "Use brand-template.potx and turn these quarterly numbers into a results deck with native charts."
• "Pull all the text and speaker notes out of training.pptx into a Markdown summary."
• "Merge the slides from deck-a.pptx and deck-b.pptx, drop the duplicate title slides, and keep the order."
• "Restyle this deck: one dominant color, no accent stripes, and a visual on every slide."

Requirements on your machine. The SKILL.md lists pptxgenjs from npm (treated as preinstalled, installed only if loading fails), markitdown[pptx], Pillow, defusedxml and lxml from pip, LibreOffice, and pdftoppm from Poppler. Icons use react-icons, react, react-dom and sharp. Without LibreOffice and Poppler, Claude can't render slides for the visual check.

Tips and limits

• License. The README says the document skills "are source-available, not open source." The LICENSE.txt is proprietary: use falls under your agreement with Anthropic, and you may not copy the materials, keep copies outside Anthropic's services, make derivative works or distribute them. Put your brand rules in a separate skill instead of editing this one.
• Fonts may differ. The skill warns that LibreOffice substitutes fonts it lacks, so text that fits in the preview may overflow in PowerPoint with fonts like Georgia or Garamond. It advises against Aptos.
• Add slides with the script. add_slide.py rewrites the input deck in place unless you pass -o, and duplicated slides still share chart parts with their source.
• Scripts run locally. In Claude Code the scripts execute on your machine. Anthropic's overview advises using skills only from trusted sources and reviewing what they run.
• Repo copy versus the app. Per the README, Claude's built-in behavior "may differ from what is shown in these skills."

Save it in your Kipt library

The license forbids copying these files, so don't import the pptx folder into a library. Keep your own pieces in Kipt instead: deck prompts with {{variables}} for audience and slide count, and a brand skill with your colors and fonts, which you can start with the free SKILL.md generator. Kipt saves them as Markdown in your own private GitHub repo, and one command installs every skill into Claude Code or Codex:

npx skills add https://github.com/<you>/<repo>.git --all -g

Similar skills

• Claude Excel skill for the numbers behind your charts.
• Claude docx skill for the written report that goes with the deck.
• Claude PDF skill for exporting and handling PDFs.
• Frontend design skill for Anthropic's design guidance on web UI.