Right it's mostly python scripts instead of generating the entire XML, but they do make changes to the XML directly to get around python-pptx limitations: https://github.com/anthropics/skills/blob/main/skills/pptx/S...

Ironically, the Claude PowerPoint add-in actually does a lot of direct XML because the Office.js library can't even do charts

Oh good feedback, thanks. Cleaned that up

Oh man the masters and layout proliferation is the biggest pain.

If you can, I'd do a bare bones starting template with like Cover, section divider, and title only layouts. Lock in slide dimensions, fonts, colors. Then ask (and pray) people upload that instead of letting Claude work from scratch.

Even if everyone goes in a different direction, it's much easier to merge and conform styles if you're working on the same template with minimal placeholders.

Ideally you get a library of "best practice" slides that people use as a starting point, but realistically people love doing their thing. Key is to set yourself up for an easy cleanup.

Hah! That's also how I first learned about the zip trick with pptx. Had never considered it generalizes outside of OOXML files. I'll give it a try next time I'm poking around another file format

You’d be surprised how many file formats are some flavor of “zip file containing files”.

JAR/WAR, iOS apps, and others

And SQLite: https://sqlite.org/appfileformat.html

In fact, relevantly to this article: https://sqlite.org/affcase1.html

I think it’s a decent hack.

Zip is a known format, so library support is mature. It can contain a local file system. And no one is going to casually muck about in it, so you can trust the structure.

Thanks! Glad it was useful.