docx-xml

DOCX XML — Advanced Skill

You are looking at this skill because a structural edit needs raw OOXML manipulation. Always check first whether edit_document can do it — see the docx-editing skill. Only drop to run_code for:

• Deleting a clause including its paragraph mark (needs <w:p><w:pPr><w:rPr><w:del/></w:rPr></w:pPr> pattern)
• Inserting multi-paragraph content mid-document
• Editing a part other than word/document.xml (styles.xml, headers/footers, numbering.xml)
• Bulk structural rewrites spanning dozens of paragraphs

Overview

A .docx file is a ZIP archive containing XML files. The main content is in word/document.xml. The OOXML namespace for Word is http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/wordprocessingml/2006/main (prefix w:).

Use language="python" + lxml + zipfile on the XML parts directly.

Why NOT docx-js: docx-js is write-only — there is no Document.load(...) API. It's for creating new DOCX files from scratch (the draft skill uses it). You cannot use it to load Contract.docx, mutate, and save back.

Why NOT python-docx for run-level mutation: python-docx silently corrupts complex legal templates. It loses non-target glyphs (other placeholders, special characters) when run.text is reassigned, has no reliable API for footnotes / bookmarks / internal hyperlinks / TableOfContents, and collapses <w:rPr> run properties when rewriting text — losing bold / font / size on surrounding runs. Never use python-docx for run.text.replace(...) or any run-level mutation. python-docx for reading and additive operations (adding images, adding paragraphs) is acceptable.

The right pattern — read XML, mutate with lxml, repack with zipfile

# run_code(language="python", input_files=["Contract.docx"], code=...)
import zipfile, io
from lxml import etree

NS = "http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/wordprocessingml/2006/main"
W = f"{{{NS}}}"

# 1. Read document.xml from the input DOCX.
with zipfile.ZipFile('/sandbox/input/Contract.docx') as zin:
    doc_xml = zin.read('word/document.xml')
    parts = {name: zin.read(name) for name in zin.namelist()}

# 2. Mutate with lxml (example — delete a specific paragraph including its mark).
root = etree.fromstring(doc_xml)
for p in root.iter(f"{W}p"):
    text = "".join(t.text or "" for t in p.iter(f"{W}t"))
    if "text-to-delete" in text:
        p.getparent().remove(p)

# 3. Repack, preserving every other part.
parts['word/document.xml'] = etree.tostring(root, xml_declaration=True,
                                            encoding='UTF-8', standalone=True)
buf = io.BytesIO()
with zipfile.ZipFile(buf, 'w', zipfile.ZIP_DEFLATED) as zout:
    for name, data in parts.items():
        zout.writestr(name, data)

with open('/sandbox/output/Contract_Edited.docx', 'wb') as f:
    f.write(buf.getvalue())