pptx
PPTX is Anthropic's proprietary agent skill for building PowerPoint decks from scratch or from your template and checking every slide for overflow; its license limits it to Claude and Anthropic's products.
Install PPTX
In Claude Code, add Anthropic's skills marketplace
/plugin marketplace add anthropics/skillsThen install the document-skills plugin, which holds the Word, PDF, PowerPoint and Excel skills
/plugin install document-skills@anthropic-agent-skillsIn Claude.ai, Anthropic says its example skills are already available on paid plans: switch them on under Customize > Skills.
Or paste this into your coding agent: Install the agent skill pptx from github.com/anthropics/skills.
A skill can include scripts that run on your computer, so read its source first.
What PPTX does
The PPTX skill teaches Claude to work with PowerPoint files (.pptx) and templates (.potx). It loads whenever a deck, slides or a presentation file is involved: creating a pitch deck, pulling the text out of a deck, editing slides, combining or splitting files, or working with layouts, speaker notes and comments.
PPTX builds new decks with the pptxgenjs library, following a list of pitfalls that corrupt files or break layouts. Existing decks and templates are unzipped and their slide XML edited, with bundled scripts that make a thumbnail grid of every slide, duplicate slides, remove unused parts and validate the file. Design guidance asks for a palette chosen for the topic, a visual on every slide, fonts that render reliably, and no accent lines under titles. Claude renders every slide as an image and fixes overflow and overlaps.
PPTX is one of Anthropic's four document skills, next to Word, PDF and Excel. Unlike most skills in Anthropic's repository it is not open source: the license allows use only within Anthropic's own services and forbids copying, changing or redistributing it. That is why this page lists only Anthropic's install routes.
When to use PPTX
- You need a pitch deck or report presentation as a real PowerPoint file.
- You have a company template and want new slides built from its layouts.
- You want the text out of an existing deck for a summary or an email.
- You need to combine slides from several decks or split one into parts.
When to pick something else
- You work in Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI or another agent that is not Anthropic's: the pptx license bars copying the skill there.
- You only want colors and fonts applied to a deck: Theme Factory does that and is Apache-2.0.
Which agents PPTX works in
Anthropic documents PPTX for Claude Code, Claude.ai, Claude API.
PPTX license
PPTX is published under Proprietary: use only within Anthropic's services, no copying or redistribution. The LICENSE.txt in the pptx folder (read 2026-10-01) puts use under your agreement with Anthropic and forbids extracting the files from Anthropic's services, keeping copies outside them, copying them, making derivative works and redistributing them. Anthropic's README calls its four document skills source-available, not open source. You may read the files on GitHub, but you may not copy them into Codex, Cursor or any other agent, or publish a changed version.
Questions people ask
Can I use Anthropic's pptx skill in Codex, Cursor or ChatGPT?
No. Its LICENSE.txt (read 2026-10-01) forbids keeping copies outside Anthropic's services, copying and redistribution, so it is meant for Claude.ai, Claude Code through Anthropic's plugin, and the Claude API. The open skills CLI does list it, but installing it into another agent copies the files, which the license forbids.
Can the pptx skill use my company's PowerPoint template?
Yes. It unzips your .pptx or .potx template, builds new slides from its layouts by editing the slide XML with bundled scripts, then renders every slide as an image to find and fix overflow and overlaps.
Related skills for documents and office files
- Obsidian Markdown: obsidian-markdown is Steph Ango's agent skill for writing Obsidian Flavored Markdown: notes with properties, wikilinks, embeds, callouts and block references that render correctly in an Obsidian vault.
- PDF (OpenAI): pdf is OpenAI's open-source agent skill for making and reviewing PDF files: the agent builds them with Python libraries, renders each page to an image and checks the layout before delivering.
- DOCX: DOCX is Anthropic's proprietary agent skill for creating, reading and editing Word files, including tracked changes, comments and tables of contents; its license limits it to Claude and Anthropic's own products.
- PDF: PDF is Anthropic's proprietary agent skill for reading, creating and editing PDF files, from pulling out tables to filling forms and OCR; its license limits it to Claude and Anthropic's own products.
More from Anthropic
- Academy Guide: Academy Guide is Anthropic's agent skill that ends Claude's answers about using Claude with one or two matching Claude Academy courses or tutorials, and only when the match is strong.
- Algorithmic Art: Algorithmic Art is Anthropic's open-source agent skill for generative art: the agent writes a short art philosophy, then builds an interactive p5.js piece with seeds and parameter sliders.
- Brand Guidelines: Brand Guidelines is Anthropic's open-source agent skill that holds Anthropic's own brand colors and fonts, so an agent can give a document, slide deck or web artifact the Anthropic look.
- Canvas Design: Canvas Design is Anthropic's open-source agent skill for static visual work: the agent writes a design philosophy, then makes a poster or art piece as a finished PNG or PDF file.