xlide-mcp

An MCP server for the inside of an Office file. Read, write, analyze and test the VBA in Excel, Word, PowerPoint and Access, and edit the document around it. Visual Basic 6 projects open the same way.

Reading and writing needs no Office installation and runs on Windows, macOS and Linux. Running macros and tests needs Windows with the desktop application.

xlide_list_projects                -> Budget.xlsm
xlide_project_info   Budget.xlsm   -> 4 modules, 2 sheets, 1 query, not signed
xlide_read_module    Helpers       -> the source, and a content token
xlide_write_module   Helpers       -> guarded by that token
xlide_analyze        Budget.xlsm   -> 0 errors, 2 warnings
xlide_run_tests      Budget.xlsm   -> 12 passed

Why

An agent asked to fix a macro works from a copied snippet with no idea what else is in the project, or asks the user to export the modules and paste them back afterwards. Both treat the Office file as opaque. The VBA project, the form designs and the M code are all readable and writable without opening the application at all.

Install

pip install xlide-mcp              # reads and writes files, any platform
pip install "xlide-mcp[live]"      # adds running macros and tests, Windows

Or install nothing and run it through uv, which fetches the package on first use and brings its own Python:

uvx --from "xlide-mcp[live]" xlide-mcp --root /path/to/your/files

The live extra is safe to ask for on every platform: what it pulls in is marked sys_platform == 'win32', so off Windows it resolves to nothing.

Run

xlide-mcp --root /path/to/your/files

Point a client at it. For Claude Desktop, Claude Code, or any client that launches a server over stdio:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "xlide": {
      "command": "xlide-mcp",
      "args": ["--root", "/path/to/your/files"]
    }
  }
}

With uv instead, so that nothing has to be installed first:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "xlide": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "--from", "xlide-mcp[live]",
        "xlide-mcp", "--root", "/path/to/your/files"
      ]
    }
  }
}

uvx takes the newest published version unless you pin it, as xlide-mcp@1.1.0.

--root is the security boundary. Every path a tool accepts is resolved, symlinks included, and refused unless it lands inside a root.

--transport streamable-http --port 8765 serves HTTP instead of stdio. It binds to loopback unless told otherwise: this server reads and writes files, and a default that listened on every interface would hand that reach to the network.

Call xlide_doctor first from a new client. It reports the workspace roots, which layers are installed, which Office applications the machine has, and whether each has the Trust Center setting that module injection needs.

What it does

Files - no Office installation, any platform. Two halves: the code project, and the document it lives in.

The code project

The document around it

Execution - Windows with the desktop application.

xlide_run_macro, xlide_run_vba, xlide_run_tests, xlide_compile_check

Your Office applications - Windows with the desktop application, and only on the file named.

xlide_is_open, xlide_open_in_app, xlide_close_in_app

Live editor - a running xlide_vbide session inside the Visual Basic Editor.

xlide_live_sessions, xlide_live_state, xlide_live_request, xlide_live_read_module

Formats

VBA reads and writes in all of them. Power Query and the document surface are Excel's, and they live in the OOXML package, so they come from .xlsx, .xlsm and .xlam. A .xlsb keeps its grid in binary records and a .xls inside a compound file; on Windows with Excel, both go through Excel instead.

A recognized extension outside those sets is listed with the reason it cannot be opened. Nothing drops out of a listing without saying why.

Seeing what changed

An Office file is one binary blob to git, so a commit that changed a line of VBA and one that replaced the whole project are the same three words: Binary files differ.

xlide_git_changes reports what changed since any revision, one entry per module and query, each with a unified diff. xlide-mcp --textconv is a git textconv driver that does the same for git itself:

echo '*.xlsm binary diff=vba' >> .gitattributes
git config diff.vba.textconv "xlide-mcp --textconv"
git config diff.vba.cachetextconv true

 Public Sub Greet()
-    MsgBox "hello"
+    MsgBox "hello, world"
+    Debug.Print Now
 End Sub

That is git diff on a .xlsm, and git show and git log -p convert too. Write binary diff=vba, not diff=vba alone: the binary macro is -diff -merge -text and the later diff=vba overrides only its -diff, so the file keeps -text and git never applies end-of-line conversion to a container it would corrupt.

Both routes cover VBA, Power Query and the sheet inventory. Cell values are not included, and the rendered text says so on its first line.

Inside VS Code beside XLIDE, every write also tells a running XLIDE what changed, so a module an agent wrote is marked in XLIDE's project tree with its diff and Keep and Revert, as XLIDE's own agent edits are. It needs an XLIDE that listens for this; the protocol is docs/xlide-vscode-bridge.md.

The rules it works by

These are in the server's own instructions, so every agent that connects reads them whether or not the user configured anything.

• The VBA inside the file is the only source of truth for it. Exported .bas and .cls files are copies and go stale.
• A read returns a content token. Pass it back on the write, and the write is refused if anything changed the module in between.
• Analysis after every change, and an error is a build failure.
• A run happens in an Office instance the server created and can therefore terminate. The user's own applications are touched only through the three tools above, on the file named: unsaved work is closed only when the call says to save or discard it, and a process is ended only when asked.
• Anything hard to undo is the user's decision: deleting a module, overwriting cells that hold data, writing to a project that is signed or password-protected. The last two are refused until the call carries the flag that allows them.
• A cell value read from the package is what Excel last calculated. A formula written there has no result in the file until Excel next opens it. calculate=true works results out with pyOfficeEditor's formula engine, which names any cell it could not.

Built on

Working on it

This package is the reference implementation in a repository that will hold others. See AGENTS.md for how to change a tool, contract/ for the generated tool surface and conformance corpus every implementation is verified against, and docs/porting.md for building one in another language.

pip install -e ".[dev,live]"
python -m pytest                 # the file layer, no Office needed
python -m pytest -m live         # the rest, real Office, Windows only
python -m ruff check src tests tools

License

MIT.