kaos-office 0.1.0a2

Office document extraction for KAOS — DOCX, XLSX, PPTX to structured AST with provenance

kaos-office

Part of Kelvin Agentic OS (KAOS) — open agentic infrastructure for legal work, built by 273 Ventures. See the full KAOS package map for the rest of the stack.

kaos-office is the Office-document layer of KAOS — it turns Microsoft Office files (.docx, .pptx, .xlsx) into typed kaos-content AST models with provenance, and turns those models back into round-trip-fidelity Office files. DOCX and PPTX produce ContentDocument (Block / Inline flow content with headings, paragraphs, lists, tables, footnotes, annotations, tracked changes, and per-section page setup); XLSX produces TabularDocument (typed columns over a 13-type ColumnType system, one Table per sheet, formulas and merged ranges preserved as metadata). The package also ships 17 read / write MCP tools and a 12-subcommand admin CLI for agentic workflows.

The base install is intentionally small — three runtime dependencies (kaos-content[markdown], kaos-core, lxml) and no compiled native code beyond the lxml wheel. Everything OOXML-shaped is parsed and written with lxml directly so the read / write paths stay symmetric; the optional extras only kick in when you want a different engine. [pptx] adds python-pptx (MIT) for the PPTX writer; [xlsx] aggregates python-calamine (MIT, Rust — 7-28× faster XLSX read) and openpyxl (MIT, formula extraction) — pick [xlsx-calamine] or [xlsx-formulas] individually if you want only one. We do not and will not depend on AGPL or GPL libraries.

Install

uv add kaos-office
# or
pip install kaos-office

# PPTX writer (python-pptx)
uv add 'kaos-office[pptx]'

# Calamine XLSX fast-path + openpyxl formula extraction
uv add 'kaos-office[xlsx]'

# BM25 sentence-level search via kaos-nlp-core
uv add 'kaos-office[nlp]'

kaos-office requires Python 3.13 or newer (3.14 is supported). The package is pure Python — the only native code is the lxml wheel, which has prebuilt wheels for Linux, macOS, and Windows on x86_64 and arm64.

Quick start

Read a DOCX into the AST, render it as markdown, and search it; then read an XLSX as a typed tabular document:

from kaos_office import (
    extract_to_markdown,
    parse_docx,
    parse_pptx,
    search_document,
)
from kaos_office.xlsx import list_sheets, parse_xlsx

# DOCX → ContentDocument with Block/Inline + provenance on every node
doc = parse_docx("contract.docx")
print(len(doc.body), "top-level blocks")
print(doc.metadata.title, doc.metadata.source.uri)

# Same shape for PPTX (each slide becomes a Div(classes="slide"))
deck = parse_pptx("brief.pptx")
print(deck.metadata.extra.get("slide_count"), "slides")

# AST-grounded search — paragraph-level by default
hits = search_document(doc, "indemnification", top_k=5)
for hit in hits.results:
    print(f"score={hit.score:.2f} :: {hit.text[:80]}")

# XLSX → TabularDocument (one Table per sheet, typed columns)
tab = parse_xlsx("report.xlsx")
for table in tab.tables:
    print(f"{table.name}: {table.row_count} rows × {len(table.columns)} cols")
print(list_sheets("report.xlsx"))  # cheap workbook metadata, no parse

# Format-agnostic shortcut: any of the three → markdown
print(extract_to_markdown("contract.docx")[:200])

Every node in the returned ContentDocument carries a Provenance (source URI, page or slide number, char span, extractor name) so downstream consumers — citation verifiers, redaction tooling, labelers — can ground answers back to the original file.

Concepts

The package is a thin, typed surface over the OOXML wire format. The most important entries:

Concept	What it is
parse_docx(path, *, track_changes=False, image_src_builder=...)	DOCX reader. Returns a ContentDocument with paragraphs, headings, lists, tables, footnotes, comments (as annotations), hyperlinks, embedded images, and per-section page setup. track_changes=True preserves w:ins / w:del / w:moveFrom / w:moveTo as Span / Div with rev-* classes plus TRACKED_CHANGE annotations.
parse_pptx(path)	PPTX reader. Each slide → Div(classes="slide", slide_number=N). Uses python-pptx for shape traversal and falls back to OPC/lxml for SmartArt text — the only Python tool that does. Charts linearize to Tables with category + series columns. Speaker notes land as Div(classes="speaker-notes").
parse_xlsx(path, *, sheets=None, max_rows=None, header_row=0, include_formulas=False, engine="native")	XLSX reader. Returns a TabularDocument. Default engine="native" is pure lxml; engine="calamine" switches to the Rust fast-path ([xlsx-calamine]). include_formulas=True extracts cell formulas via openpyxl ([xlsx-formulas]).
write_docx(doc, path) / write_docx_bytes(doc)	DOCX writer (lxml). Round-trips the DOCX feature surface: paragraphs / headings, bullet + ordered lists with proper numbering.xml, tables with grid spans, hyperlinks (with proper rels), footnotes, endnotes, comments, headers, footers, page setup, multi-section documents, embedded images (data: / file:// URIs), and SDT / content-control wrappers.
write_pptx(doc, path, *, template=None, overflow="warn"/"autofit"/"extend")	PPTX writer (python-pptx, lazy-imported with [pptx] install hint at call time). Auto-segments at Heading(depth=1). overflow controls how text that may not fit a shape is handled — "warn" (default) emits a logger warning, "autofit" shrinks the font, "extend" grows the shape.
write_xlsx(doc, path, *, bold_headers=True, auto_width=True, freeze_header=True) / write_xlsx_bytes(doc)	XLSX writer (lxml — no extras needed). Native SpreadsheetML output with proper date formats, money formats, percentage / float / integer formats per ColumnType, auto-sized columns, bold header row, and frozen panes.
search_document(doc, query, *, top_k=10, level="paragraph")	Re-exported from kaos-content. AST-grounded ranked search returning SearchResults with total_matches / has_more for pagination. level="sentence" requires the [nlp] extra.
extract_to_markdown(path, **kwargs)	Format-agnostic convenience wrapper. Dispatches by extension to parse_docx + serialize_markdown, parse_pptx + serialize_markdown, or parse_xlsx + serialize_tabular_markdown.
17 MCP tools	ParseDocxTool, GetDocxTextTool, GetDocxMarkdownTool, DocxMetadataTool, SearchDocxTool (5 DOCX) · ParsePptxTool, ListSlidesTool, GetSlideTool, GetSlideNotesTool, SearchPptxTool (5 PPTX) · ParseXlsxTool, ListSheetsXlsxTool, GetSheetXlsxTool, XlsxMetadataTool (4 XLSX) · WriteDocxTool, WritePptxTool, WriteXlsxTool (3 writers). All readers are readOnly + idempotent + non-destructive + non-open-world; writers refuse silent overwrites unless force=true. Register with register_office_tools(runtime).
Errors (KaosOfficeError, DocxExtractionError, PptxExtractionError, XlsxExtractionError)	Dedicated exception hierarchy. MCP tools translate these into ToolResult.create_error() with the documented three-part recovery hint (what / how to fix / alternative tool).

CLI

kaos-office ships two entry-point scripts. Every structured command on the admin CLI supports --json for machine-readable output piped to other agents:

kaos-office --help                                  # admin CLI
kaos-office-serve --help                            # MCP server

# DOCX
kaos-office extract contract.docx -f markdown       # AST → markdown / text / json / html
kaos-office search contract.docx "indemnification"  # AST-grounded ranked search
kaos-office metadata contract.docx --json           # title, author, page setup, sections

# PPTX
kaos-office pptx-extract brief.pptx -f markdown
kaos-office pptx-slides brief.pptx --json           # slide inventory (number, title, layout)
kaos-office pptx-slide brief.pptx 3                 # text from a single slide (1-based)

# XLSX
kaos-office xlsx-extract report.xlsx -f markdown    # tabular markdown
kaos-office xlsx-sheets report.xlsx --json          # sheet names + dimensions
kaos-office xlsx-sheet report.xlsx Revenue          # one sheet as TSV

# Writers (JSON file or '-' for stdin)
kaos-office write-docx body.json out.docx --force
kaos-office write-pptx body.json out.pptx --template brand.pptx
kaos-office write-xlsx tabular.json out.xlsx

kaos-office-serve                                   # stdio (Claude Code / Desktop)
kaos-office-serve --http --port 8000                # streamable HTTP

The admin CLI uses 1-based slide / page numbers (consistent with how the file opens in any viewer) and translates internally to the 0-based indices the Python API uses. kaos-office-serve exposes the 17 MCP tools listed in Concepts above.

Compatibility & status

Aspect
Python	3.13, 3.14
OS	Linux, macOS, Windows (pure-Python wheel; the only native code is the lxml wheel)
Maturity	Alpha (Development Status :: 3 - Alpha). The public API is documented in kaos_office.__all__.
Stability policy	Pre-1.0: minor bumps may change behaviour. Every change is documented in CHANGELOG.md. The MCP tool surface (kaos-office-* names) and the KAOS_OFFICE_* environment-variable namespace are public API and follow the same policy.
Test coverage	492 unit tests plus a 144-test integration tier covering DOCX / PPTX / XLSX round-trip fidelity against real-world fixtures. Bounded unit gate (pytest tests/unit -q --no-cov) finishes in ~30s.
Type checker	Validated with ty, Astral's Python type checker.

Companion packages

kaos-office is one of the packages in the Kelvin Agentic OS. The broader stack:

Package	Layer	What it does
kaos-core	Core	Foundational runtime, MCP-native types, registries, execution engine, VFS
kaos-content	Core	Typed document AST: Block/Inline, provenance, views
kaos-mcp	Bridge	FastMCP server, kaos management CLI, MCP resource templates
kaos-pdf	Extraction	PDF → AST with provenance
kaos-web	Extraction	Web extraction, browser automation, search, domain intelligence
kaos-office	Extraction	DOCX / PPTX / XLSX readers + writers to AST
kaos-tabular	Extraction	DuckDB-powered SQL analytics
kaos-source	Data	Government + financial data connectors (Federal Register, eCFR, EDGAR, GovInfo, PACER, GLEIF)
kaos-llm-client	LLM	Multi-provider LLM transport
kaos-llm-core	LLM	Typed LLM programming (Signatures, Programs, Optimizers)
kaos-nlp-core	Primitives (Rust)	High-performance NLP primitives
kaos-nlp-transformers	ML	Dense embeddings + retrieval
kaos-graph	Primitives (Rust)	Graph algorithms + RDF/SPARQL
kaos-ml-core	Primitives (Rust)	Classical ML on the document AST
kaos-citations	Legal	Legal citation extraction, resolution, verification
kaos-agents	Agentic	Agent runtime, memory, recipes
kaos-reference	Sample	Reference module for module authors

Packages depend on kaos-core; everything else is opt-in. Mix and match the ones you need.

Development

git clone https://github.com/273v/kaos-office
cd kaos-office
uv sync --group dev

Install pre-commit hooks (recommended — they run the same checks as CI on every commit, scoped to staged files):

uvx pre-commit install
uvx pre-commit run --all-files     # one-time full sweep

Manual QA commands (the same set CI runs):

uv run ruff format --check kaos_office tests
uv run ruff check kaos_office tests
uv run ty check kaos_office tests
uv run pytest tests/unit -q --no-cov

Build from source

uv build
uv pip install dist/*.whl
python -c "import kaos_office; print(kaos_office.__version__)"  # smoke import

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. By contributing you certify the Developer Certificate of Origin v1.1 — sign every commit with git commit -s. Please open an issue before starting on a non-trivial change so we can align on scope.

Security

For security issues, please do not file a public issue. Report privately via GitHub Private Vulnerability Reporting or email [e-mail]. See SECURITY.md for the full disclosure policy.

License

Apache License 2.0 — see LICENSE and NOTICE.

Copyright 2026 273 Ventures LLC. Built for kelvin.legal.