ppt-mcp

---

An MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that gives AI agents full control over a live Microsoft PowerPoint instance, over COM on Windows and Apple Events on macOS. Unlike file-based libraries like python-pptx, this server interacts directly with a running PowerPoint application.

🎬 Demo

An agent building a deck in a live PowerPoint window (15x speed):

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/178b9b5b-624d-4de0-a1dd-619dc13d4bd7

✨ Key Features

• Real-time control — Directly manipulates a running PowerPoint instance; changes appear instantly on screen
• Broad coverage — Slides, shapes, text, tables, charts, animations, SmartArt, media, freeform paths, and more
• Safe for AI agents — ppt_activate_presentation locks all tools to a specific file, preventing accidental edits to the wrong presentation
• Google Material Symbols icons — Search 2,500+ icons by keyword and insert as SVG with theme colors
• Theme color awareness — Pass accent1, accent2, etc. wherever a fill, line, shadow, glow or text color is taken, instead of hardcoded RGB values; the shapes follow the theme when it changes
• Windows and macOS — The same tools, arguments and return values on both; where PowerPoint for Mac cannot do something, the tool says so rather than quietly doing nothing

📋 Requirements

• Windows 11, or macOS with Apple Silicon or Intel
• Microsoft PowerPoint
• uv

On macOS the server drives PowerPoint over Apple Events instead of COM. The first tool call raises the system's automation prompt, and PowerPoint has to be allowed there once. Pictures, icons, templates, themes, previews and exports pass through PowerPoint's own folder, which macOS 14 and later keeps other apps out of, so the application that launches the server (Terminal, an editor, Claude) needs Full Disk Access for those tools. Run from a terminal, macOS may refuse without asking; the tools then say what to grant. Shapes, text, tables and charts work regardless. See macOS support for what differs.

🚀 Getting Started

Standard config — works in Claude Desktop, Cursor, .mcp.json, and most other MCP clients:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "powerpoint": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["ppt-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Claude Code

User-scoped (available in all projects)

claude mcp add --scope user powerpoint uvx ppt-mcp

Project-scoped (stored in .mcp.json, shared with your team)

claude mcp add --scope project powerpoint uvx ppt-mcp

Cursor

Or add manually to ~/.cursor/mcp.json using the standard config above.

Claude Desktop

Edit %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json using the standard config above.

Codex

Edit ~/.codex/config.toml:

[mcp_servers.ppt-mcp]
command = "uvx"
args = ["ppt-mcp"]

Or use the standard JSON config above in .codex/config.json.

VS Code

code --add-mcp '{"name":"powerpoint","command":"uvx","args":["ppt-mcp"]}'

From source

git clone https://github.com/ykuwai/ppt-mcp.git
cd ppt-mcp
uv sync

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "powerpoint": {
      "command": "uv",
      "args": [
        "--directory",
        "C:\\path\\to\\ppt-mcp",
        "run",
        "mcp",
        "run",
        "src/server.py"
      ]
    }
  }
}

🛠️ Tool Categories

The full list of tools, by category, is in TOOLS.md.

💡 Example Prompts

Just describe what you want in plain language — no code required.

---

Simple — topic only

"Create a 3-slide intro deck for a productivity app called Flowly."

---

With style direction — topic + visual style

"Make a 4-slide presentation on the benefits of async work. Dark navy style, add icons for each benefit."

---

Detailed — topic + design intent + slide structure

"Build a 5-slide pitch for an AI note-taking app called NoteAI. White background, teal accent. Slides: title, problem, solution, features with icons, closing."

---

Design keywords that elevate results:

Aspect	Keywords / Phrases	What it does
Icons	add icons · icon for each point · use icons throughout	Searches Google Material Symbols and places crisp SVG icons automatically
Color scheme	dark navy · white background · monochrome · light gray	Sets the overall color palette and mood
Accent color	teal accent · blue accent · brand color #2563EB	Applies a specific highlight color to headings, icons, and shapes
Style tone	modern minimal · bold and vibrant · clean and professional · playful	Signals the overall visual personality
Deck type	pitch deck · investor presentation · workshop slides · status report	Guides layout and content density toward the intended purpose
Slide structure	Slides: title, problem, solution, features, CTA · 4 slides	Defines the narrative arc and slide count up front
Layout	card layout · two-column · centered · full-bleed background	Shapes how content is arranged on each slide
Text density	minimal text · one message per slide · bullet points	Controls how much text appears and how it's formatted
Backgrounds	gradient background · solid dark background · soft light background	Specifies the background treatment across slides
Emphasis	highlight key numbers · bold headings · accent bar on each slide	Draws attention to the most important information

🔍 Features in Detail

🎯 Presentation Targeting

ppt_activate_presentation sets a session-level target so every subsequent tool call operates on that specific file — regardless of which window is active in PowerPoint. Switch targets anytime by calling it again.

ppt_activate_presentation(presentation_name="report.pptx")
# All tools now operate on report.pptx
ppt_activate_presentation(presentation_name="demo.pptx")
# Switched — all tools now operate on demo.pptx

The activated presentation is one value for the whole server, and a client such as Claude Desktop routes every conversation through one server. When several conversations work on different files at once, pass presentation on each call. It applies to that call only, leaves the activated presentation alone, and accepts a full path, a file name, or a file name without extension. A file that is not open is an error, never a fallback to another one.

ppt_add_textbox(params={...}, presentation="report.pptx")
# Lands in report.pptx whatever another conversation has activated

👥 Files Others Edit at the Same Time (Windows)

A presentation opened from SharePoint or OneDrive can be edited by other people while the server works on it. Without AutoSave, PowerPoint takes in what they have saved only when the file is saved, and shows "Updates available" until then; the server would read and write the older state. The server handles that for such a file:

• Before a tool call it merges the others' changes, as long as nothing in this copy is unsaved, so a read sees the current state. A writing call whose slides or shapes the merge moved is refused without changes, because its indices came from the older state.
• Results carry coauthoring: pending_updates (changes wait; ppt_save_presentation takes them in), merged_updates (they were just merged), conflict. ppt_open_presentation, ppt_activate_presentation and ppt_get_presentation_info always report it, with coauthor_count; ppt_list_presentations gives pending_updates per file.
• A conflict (both sides changed the same object) opens PowerPoint's "Resolve conflict" dialog, which the object model cannot answer, so it stays with the user. An integration can answer it instead: utils.coauthoring.set_conflict_resolver(fn) registers a function that gets the Presentation on the COM thread and returns True once the dialog is answered; the result then lists in overwritten each slide that now differs from this copy's version, with the text it had here.

📁 Template Support

Auto-detects your personal PowerPoint templates folder (registry, OneDrive, or default paths). Use ppt_list_templates to discover available templates, then ppt_create_presentation(template_path=...) to create a new presentation from any template.

🎨 Google Material Symbols Icons

Search 2,500+ Google Material Symbols icons with ppt_search_icons(query="...") and insert them as SVG with ppt_add_svg_icon:

• 3 styles: outlined, rounded, sharp
• Filled variants: set filled=True
• Theme colors: color="accent1" uses the presentation's accent color
• Auto-fit: preserves aspect ratio within the specified area

⚡ Real-Time Navigation

Every write operation automatically navigates PowerPoint to the target slide. You see changes happening in real-time — no need to manually switch slides.

✍️ Text Formatting

• \n — Paragraph break (Enter). Each paragraph gets its own bullet/indent level.
• \v — Line break (Shift+Enter). Stays in the same paragraph, preserving formatting.
• Per-character formatting with ppt_format_text_range
• Auto-fit control: shrink text to fit, resize shape, or overflow

🎨 Theme Color Presets & Auto-Generation

ppt_set_theme_colors supports three modes:

• 17 curated presets — WCAG AA accessible palettes across 5 categories: Classic (corporate_blue, executive, consulting), Design Systems (tailwind, chakra, open_color, radix), Nature (ocean, forest, sunset, sage), Modern (nord_light, pastel_deep, swiss), Vibrant (vivid, rainbow, neon_safe)
• Primary color generation — provide a single brand color (primary="#2B579A") to auto-generate a full harmonious palette using color harmony (split-complementary + analogous)
• Manual — set individual color slots (accent1, accent2, etc.)

Modes can be combined: use a preset as a base and override specific slots. All accents are guaranteed 3:1+ contrast on white.

🔍 Typography Check

ppt_check_typography detects and optionally auto-fixes common typography issues:

• Widow lines — isolated 1-3 character lines caused by word wrapping
• Short lines after soft returns — side effects of manual line breaks (\v)
• Auto-shrunk text — text silently compressed by PowerPoint's shrink-to-fit feature

Auto-fix strategies include widening text boxes and inserting soft returns.

📐 Layout Check

ppt_check_layout measures a slide, or the whole deck, and reports what is wrong as numbers rather than as a picture, so it works whether or not the model can read images:

• Off the slide — a shape, or its text, reaching past a slide edge
• Overflow — text that needs more room than its box gives it
• Overlap — text running into another shape or into other text, text over a table's cells or hidden under a card laid over it, and anything a slide adds running into or across the template's own graphics: its logo, a band down the side, a footer line, the rule under the title
• Low contrast — text against what is behind it, below the WCAG minimum for its size, on a gradient too, and on a photo against the part of the photo under it
• Cramped text — text on a card pressed against one of its edges
• Narrow margin — a shape closer to the side of the slide than the margin the rest of the slide keeps, or run almost to its top or bottom
• Title edge — a title whose words start a few points from where the body below it starts, which reads as two edges a little apart
• Misaligned — edges a few points apart that were meant to line up
• Uneven spacing — a row or column of like shapes with unequal gaps
• Uneven sizes — like shapes in a row that are not one height, or in a column not one width, and a row with one card a little wider than the rest
• Sample text — lorem ipsum, "Your title here", "[Company name]" or "XX%" left behind by a template or a draft, and a chart still holding the data PowerPoint puts in a new one
• Stretched pictures — a picture or logo drawn in other proportions than its image; the fix puts them back, or crops the picture to its box with ppt_crop_picture crop_fit
• Small text — text under 10 pt, which a projected slide loses, measured at the size PowerPoint draws text it shrinks to fit
• Blurry pictures — a picture drawn larger than its image has pixels for
• Charts — data labels running into each other, or a legend or title lying on the plot. Windows only: PowerPoint for Mac has no chart object to read
• Alt text — a picture, chart or SmartArt graphic a screen reader cannot describe. ppt_update_shape alt_text sets it on Windows; PowerPoint for Mac does not let a tool set it, so there it is set by hand
• Fonts — text in a font this computer does not have, so PowerPoint draws it in a stand-in, and Hebrew or Arabic drawn in another font than the one asked for
• Right-to-left text — on a Hebrew or Arabic slide, a line of numbers only, such as "1948–1967", which PowerPoint draws left to right and a reader reads backwards, and a paragraph left to right in a file another program wrote. sets a paragraph's direction and keeps the side it is aligned to

Shapes inside groups and SmartArt graphics are checked for what their text says and how it is set: overflow, contrast, sample text, fonts, direction and size.

A slide is judged as the slide show draws it. Lines a build-up shows one at a time in one place do not overlap, a shape a motion path moves is judged where it goes, a sound's icon dragged off the slide is hidden on purpose, and a shape waiting off a slide next to a Morph transition is left there. A finding on a hidden slide says that it is hidden.

Each issue names the shapes and says how to fix it, with the tool call and its values. A fix keeps the slide together rather than only clearing the issue: a card grows with its padding and the rest of its row, and a shape brought back onto the slide keeps the slide's margin. The tools that add, copy, move, resize, align, distribute or retext a shape, or fill a placeholder, also check the shape they touched and report any problem in their own result, under layout_issues, so it is caught by the call that caused it. A new slide background, or a new fill under text, reports the text it left hard to read, and a change to the whole deck, its theme, theme colours, fonts or slide size, reports what it broke that was not broken before.

Each of those checks reads the slide back, which adds a moment to every write, more on the Mac. To leave the checking to ppt_check_layout alone, set PPT_LAYOUT_CHECKS=off in the server's env; the server's instructions then tell the model to run it after each few changes. The accepted values are on (the default) and off; anything else is ignored with a warning and the checks stay on. A change to the whole deck (theme, theme colours, font, default fonts, slide size) reads every slide before and after. On a deck of more than 300 shapes it reads neither, since that would take longer than the change, and says so under layout_check_skipped, leaving the deck to ppt_check_layout. Paragraph formatting, bullets, picture crops and formats, grouping, SmartArt, chart data, lines, deleting table rows and columns, splitting cells and copying slides are checked the same way. A slide copied into another open deck is not: the check reads the deck the server is working on.

On a deck made from a template, the template is part of the check. The graphics its slide master and layouts draw are read, so a chart sized over the logo or a footnote on the confidentiality line is reported, and what the template designed is taken as meant: a placeholder still in the theme's colours, or a caption layout's own smaller title, is not held to the rest, and in a deck on two designs each design's titles are compared only with each other. Theme colours set with ppt_set_theme_colors are the caller's, so that call judges the placeholders in them too, and so does every later check once the theme's own text colour no longer reads on its background. PowerPoint for Mac exposes the master's graphics but not a layout's own, nor what is inside a group, so there the layout's graphics, its title's place, the theme's fonts and the text inside groups are read from the deck's saved file, while it holds what is on screen. On a deck not yet saved, or changed since, a layout's design is allowed for through its placeholders.

⚙️ Advanced Configuration

Handling PowerPoint Modal Dialogs

When PowerPoint has a modal dialog open (e.g., SmartArt layout picker, Save dialog, Insert dialog), COM calls return RPC_E_CALL_REJECTED. The MCP server automatically retries for up to 15 seconds (5 retries × 3 s), so the server stays connected and responsive even when a dialog is blocking PowerPoint.

Auto-dismiss (opt-in): By default, the server waits for you to close the dialog manually. To have the server automatically send ESC on the first retry — dismissing the dialog without user interaction — set PPT_AUTO_DISMISS_DIALOG=true:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "powerpoint": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["ppt-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "PPT_AUTO_DISMISS_DIALOG": "true"
      }
    }
  }
}

ESC cancels without committing, so there are no destructive side effects. This is particularly useful in automated workflows where no human is present to close dialogs.

PowerPoint that the server starts

If no PowerPoint is running when a tool needs one (ppt_create_presentation, ppt_open_presentation, ppt_connect), the server starts it. On macOS it starts in the background and does not take the front from the app you are working in.

When a close leaves no presentation open in a PowerPoint the server started, ppt_close_presentation quits PowerPoint too and says so (powerpoint_quit). A PowerPoint you started yourself is never quit, and neither is one that still has a presentation open (on Windows, or a file open in Protected View). Pass keep_powerpoint_open=true to keep it running, for example to open another presentation straight away. Until a tool starts PowerPoint again, tools that need it answer that PowerPoint is not running, where they would otherwise have reported an empty list. On Windows, a file open in Protected View is listed by ppt_list_presentations under protected_view, and ppt_close_presentation closes it by its name, without saving.

Working in the same deck as the model

Each write moves the deck's window to the slide it works on, so you can see where the model is. To work in the deck yourself at the same time, without the window jumping to another slide, set PPT_FOLLOW_EDITS=off in the server's env. The edits land the same way; only the window stays where you left it. ppt_goto_slide still moves it when asked. The accepted values are on (the default) and off; anything else is ignored with a warning. While you are typing in a text box PowerPoint may hold the model's call for a moment, and undo (Ctrl+Z) is shared, so it can take back the model's last change.

"env": { "PPT_FOLLOW_EDITS": "off" }

Icons on a network that blocks the icon sites

ppt_search_icons reads its icon list from fonts.google.com, and ppt_add_svg_icon downloads icons from cdn.jsdelivr.net. Every download, pictures by URL included, gives up after 15 seconds and says which host it could not reach. Three settings change that:

Setting	Default	What it does
PPT_ICON_BASE_URL	https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@material-symbols/[email protected]	Where icons come from. Any address with the package's layout (<base>/outlined/home.svg) works: a mirror such as https://unpkg.com/@material-symbols/[email protected], or a local copy of the package as file:///path/to/svg-400.
PPT_ICON_METADATA_URL	https://fonts.google.com/metadata/icons	Where the icon list comes from. Save that page once and point this at the copy, as file:///path/to/icons.json.
PPT_DOWNLOAD_TIMEOUT	15	Seconds to wait for a server to answer. A value that is not a positive number is ignored (15 is used).

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "powerpoint": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["ppt-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "PPT_ICON_BASE_URL": "https://unpkg.com/@material-symbols/[email protected]"
      }
    }
  }
}

The tool list: catalog mode

A client sends the description of every tool it lists with every request, and this server's tools come to about 112k tokens, a large part of a 128k or 200k window before any work. By default the server lists three tools instead, about 700 tokens, and the model reaches the rest through them:

Tool	What it does
ppt_describe	With no names, the list of all the tools, one line each. With names, their full description and arguments.
ppt_run	Runs one tool: {"tool": "ppt_add_textbox", "params": {...}}.
ppt_run_steps	Runs several in order, in one call. A step can use what an earlier one answered: "$prev.shape_name" is the previous step's shape_name, "$2.shape_name" the second step's. The first step that fails ends the run and says why.

The tools themselves are the same, with the same arguments, checks and answers, and presentation is passed the same way. The model asks ppt_describe before using a tool for the first time, which costs one call. Building the same 12-slide deck through Claude Code, the context peaked at 136k tokens in catalog mode against 206k with every tool listed, and the run cost a third less.

What catalog mode gives up is per-tool control in the client: approving or blocking a tool by its name, and its read-only hint, apply to the three tools above rather than to each one. A client that relies on that sets PPT_TOOL_MODE=full in the server's env, and every tool is listed by its own name, as below; PPT_TOOL_MODE=catalog is the default. A value other than catalog or full is ignored with a warning, and catalog mode is used.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "powerpoint": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["ppt-mcp"],
      "env": { "PPT_TOOL_MODE": "full" }
    }
  }
}

🍎 macOS support

With the VBA add-in, on by default, 3 tools refuse on macOS; without it, 10 do. The rest work. The 10 are listed by name in MACOS_PORT.md section 6.1, and a test keeps that list honest.

The same tools, the same arguments, the same answers. What differs is what PowerPoint for Mac's scripting dictionary can reach, and where it cannot reach something the tool says so rather than doing something unexpected.

PowerPoint for Mac's VBA reaches further. The server loads a small add-in, ppt-mcp-bridge, into PowerPoint and runs the Windows code through it for what the scripting dictionary has no words for: tags, ppt_select_shapes, ppt_set_table_style, removing and copying one animation, a freeform node's editing type, the chart formatting, axis, series, type and data tools (the data through the chart's Excel workbook, which opens in Excel for a moment, as on Windows), the freeform node tools and grouping, text inside a group, a template's layouts by name, duplicating and copying slides, editing a SmartArt (its text, nodes, colours and style), and the arguments the Mac otherwise refuses (a screen tip, a table row or column at a position, a click trigger on another shape, reflection sizes, glow, shadow and reflection on text, shrinking text to fit, volume, mute, trimming and fades, a chart style and the legend and title placement). Those edit the shape in place, so it keeps its animations, and the clipboard is not touched. The add-in only passes those calls on; its source is in src/backend/vba. PowerPoint loads it without a prompt and keeps it until PowerPoint quits; a copy of the file stays in PowerPoint's own folder. While it is loaded, other programs allowed to control PowerPoint can call it too, but only within PowerPoint's object model, and it refuses to run macros, quit or reach add-ins. Where it cannot be loaded, where macros are turned off by policy for instance, the tools work as described below. macOS may ask whether the app that runs the server may reach data from other apps; allow it, as the add-in answers through PowerPoint's folder. Until it is answered, or if it is refused, the tools work as described below after a two-second wait. It is on by default; PPT_MAC_VBA=off in the server's env turns it off. A call the add-in would have taken then says so, in its hint or warnings, as it does when the add-in cannot be loaded.

Not available on macOS:

• ppt_execute_mso, and without the add-in also a freeform node's editing type (move the node's handles instead), tags, ppt_select_shapes, ppt_set_table_style and removing one animation (clearing a slide's animations works). Nothing in the dictionary reaches them.

Smaller differences:

• Call the tools one after another, not several in the same turn. Only one request at a time reaches PowerPoint, so the rest queue behind it and come out in whatever order they arrived. A call left waiting too long is taken back and says so, having changed nothing.
• Without the add-in, a few tools accept an argument that has no counterpart, a screen tip on a hyperlink for instance. Those refuse with a message naming the argument, so dropping it and retrying works.
• Video and audio go in embedded, never linked, and of the eight playback settings only looping and hiding the frame exist, and with the add-in volume, mute, trimming and fades. Hiding the frame is refused on a slide that already has animations, because writing it rewrites them.
• Exports are staged through PowerPoint's own container and moved out, because the application is sandboxed and cannot write to arbitrary folders.
• Without the add-in, a template's own layouts are found by name in the deck's saved file, so save a new deck before asking ppt_add_slide for one by name. PowerPoint for Mac names no layouts to a script, so the slide is pasted in on its layout, which takes about a second. With the add-in the layout is found in the open deck, saved or not.
• Slide images are rendered from a PDF rather than exported as PNG. A preview is 2 pixels per point on both platforms.
• Automation consent belongs to whichever application launched the server, so running it from a different terminal or editor raises the prompt again.
• Save the deck early and at each break. It costs nothing, and PowerPoint has been seen to close every open document and then exit when a sandbox prompt went up behind a script (#191).
• Adding a chart goes through the clipboard, and without the add-in so do the other chart tools, freeform paths and grouping. The operation takes the clipboard for a moment and puts back what was there. This is how they reach a dictionary that has no words for them. PowerPoint for Mac pastes into its front window, so with two decks open these work on the deck in front; for the other, the tool says so and changes nothing, and ppt_activate_presentation brings it to the front.
• Without the add-in, editing an existing chart or path recreates the shape, and with it, setting a bubble chart's sizes still does. The tool copies the shape, rewrites it and pastes it back, then deletes the original. The name, position and z order are kept; animations on the shape are not, and the result says how many were lost. Without the add-in, a few formatting arguments that depend on the chart's rendered size (chart_style, legend and title coordinates, the 8-direction legend presets) are refused by name.

🤝 Contributing

Pull requests are welcome. Base them on develop, one topic each, with tests; CONTRIBUTING.md has the rest.

📄 License

MIT

🙏 Credits

• FastMCP — Pythonic MCP server framework
• pywin32 — Windows COM automation
• appscript — macOS Apple Event bridge
• Model Context Protocol — by Anthropic