Skill of the day: document-skills

Radar fiche: anthropics document-skills marketplace pack for doc/xlsx/pptx workflows - what it is, when to use, install path, honest limits.

document-skills is the official Anthropic marketplace plugin that bundles four Agent Skills for Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and PDF. Register the anthropics/skills marketplace, install document-skills@anthropic-agent-skills, then ask Claude to use the matching skill on a file job. Marketplace metadata version on the catalog entry: 1.0.0 (marketplace field - not a per-skill semver). Checked 2026-09-14.

TL;DR. Four skills, one plugin. Install with the README commands below. Document skills are source-available / proprietary, not Apache like many example skills in the same repo. Pair with academy-guide (learn) and discernment-nudge (verify after acting).

What’s in the plugin

Marketplace description: “Collection of document processing suite including Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and PDF capabilities.” Skill paths from marketplace.json:

Skill	Path	Job (from SKILL.md, one line)
`xlsx`	`./skills/xlsx`	Spreadsheet create/edit/analysis - openpyxl/pandas; formulas + LibreOffice recalc
`docx`	`./skills/docx`	Word `.docx` / `.dotx` create, edit, tracked changes, comments (docx-js / unzip+XML)
`pptx`	`./skills/pptx`	Decks / templates create & edit (pptxgenjs; visual QA via PDF/images)
`pdf`	`./skills/pdf`	Read, merge, split, create, OCR, forms toolkit (pypdf, pdfplumber, reportlab, …)

Each SKILL.md marks license: Proprietary. LICENSE.txt has complete terms. Treat them as the production-style reference Anthropic ships for document work - not as a free-for-all open-source fork target.

When to use / when not

Use when the primary input or output is a document file: .xlsx / .xlsm / .csv, .docx / .dotx, .pptx / .potx, or .pdf.

Do not (each skill’s own Do NOT triggers, compressed):

Primary deliverable is plain code, HTML-only reports, Google Docs/Sheets API work, or non-document jobs
Expect a magic Office UI without the local tooling the skill scripts assume (LibreOffice, pandoc, poppler, etc.)

Field note: pick the skill that matches the file type. Don’t treat the four as one mental blob.

Install (Claude Code)

Exact README commands:

/plugin marketplace add anthropics/skills

Then either Browse - anthropic-agent-skills - document-skills - Install now, or:

/plugin install document-skills@anthropic-agent-skills

After install, mention the skill - README example: Use the PDF skill to extract the form fields from path/to/some-file.pdf.

Also available on Claude.ai paid plans and via the Claude API Skills guide - mention only; this radar stays Code/marketplace-first.

Limits & license

README: skills are demo/reference; Claude product behavior may differ from the repo
Document skills under skills/{xlsx,docx,pptx,pdf} are source-available, not Apache open source like many example-skills entries - cite each skill’s LICENSE.txt if you redistribute or dig deep
Heavy scripts + LibreOffice in sandboxed environments - not a one-click chat toy
No invented plugin CLI flags beyond the marketplace install path above

Pair with prior radars

Radar	Moment
Skill of the day: `academy-guide`	Learning / onboarding - recommend Academy items
Skill of the day: `discernment-nudge`	After an actable answer - check facts, reasoning, gaps
`document-skills`	The deliverable is a spreadsheet, deck, Word file, or PDF

Learn - produce a document - nudge yourself to verify assumptions in the deck or numbers.

Sources (checked 2026-09-14)

marketplace.json - plugin document-skills; skills paths; metadata version 1.0.0
anthropics/skills README - install commands; source-available document skills note; disclaimer
SKILL.md headers: xlsx · docx · pptx · pdf

Where to go next

See Claude Skills and Create a Claude Code skill.