PowerPointMcp — MCP Server & CLI for Microsoft PowerPoint
Automate PowerPoint with AI — a Model Context Protocol server and CLI
for live, real-time PowerPoint automation through conversational AI. Sibling project to
mcp-server-excel, following the same layered
architecture: ComInterop → Core → CLI / MCP Server.
MCP Server for PowerPoint enables AI assistants (GitHub Copilot, Claude, ChatGPT) to build and
edit real .pptx presentations through natural language — slides, shapes, text, tables, charts,
speaker notes, and layouts — no VBA or PowerPoint object-model knowledge required.
🛡️ Live COM automation, not file parsing — Most PowerPoint MCP servers manipulate .pptx
files offline with libraries like python-pptx, or use agent-run scripts with LibreOffice-rendered
thumbnails. This project instead drives a live, real PowerPoint desktop instance via
Microsoft.Office.Interop.PowerPoint — the official Primary Interop Assembly. That means
true-fidelity rendering, compatibility with an already-open deck, and zero risk of producing a
.pptx that PowerPoint itself can't open, because PowerPoint is the one writing it.
🖼️ Export-to-verify — the core differentiator. After any visual edit, export the slide (or the
whole deck) to an image with export(action="export-slide-to-image", ...) /
export(action="export-all-slides-to-images", ...) and let a
vision-capable AI assistant see the result — catching overlapping shapes, text overflow, and
layout regressions that text-only automation simply cannot detect.
Technical Requirements:
- ⚠️ Windows Only — COM interop is Windows-specific
- ⚠️ PowerPoint Required — Microsoft PowerPoint 2016 or later must be installed
- ⚠️ Desktop Environment — controls a real PowerPoint process (not for server-side processing)
TIP
Also automating spreadsheets? Check out Excel MCP Server —
the sister project, built the same way.
🎯 What You Can Do
16 MCP tools with 188 operations across 16 domains:
- 🗂️ Presentation (20 ops) — create, open, Save As, Save Copy As, close, list sessions, apply a
.potx/.pptx template's masters/theme/layouts, read the current theme name, set/read
PowerPoint's advisory Mark as Final flag, read/write built-in and custom document properties,
and manage string tags
- 📑 Slide (23 ops) — lifecycle, backgrounds, sections, comments, slide import, and string tags
- ▭ Shape (48 ops) — shapes, styling, grouping, hyperlinks, linked assets, placeholder editing,
and string tags
- ✏️ TextFrame (20 ops) — text, font size/name/color, bold, italic, underline, alignment, bullets
- 📊 Table (12 ops) — add, cell text, insert/delete rows & columns, cell fill/border, merge cells
- 🗣️ Notes (2 ops) — set/get speaker notes
- 🖼️ Layout (4 ops) — set/get slide layout
- 📐 Page Setup (5 ops) — slide size, first slide number, footer, date/time, slide numbers
- ♿ Accessibility (3 ops) — deterministic audit and reading-order management
- 🎭 Master (11 ops) — theme color palettes, slide master title/body placeholder fonts, background color
- 🎬 Animation (5 ops) — shape entrance/emphasis/exit effects, slide transitions
- 🖼️ Image (7 ops) — insert embedded or linked pictures and adjust brightness, contrast,
recolor, and crop
- 📈 Chart (16 ops) — add chart, multi-series data, titles, legend, built-in styles, color styles,
and data tables
- 🎧 Media (2 ops) — insert embedded or linked audio/video and inspect native media metadata
- 🔀 SmartArt (7 ops) — insert and edit SmartArt diagrams
- 🖼️ Export (3 ops) — export to PDF or images for delivery and visual verification
Every domain is exposed as a single action-dispatch tool (e.g. shape, table, chart,
presentation) with an action parameter selecting the specific operation — keeping the tool
list small for AI assistants while still exposing every operation.
📚 Complete Feature Reference → — detailed
documentation of every tool and operation
💬 Example Prompts
Build a deck from scratch:
- "Create a new presentation with a title slide and three content slides about our Q3 results,
then export it as images so I can see it."
Tables & charts:
- "Add a 4x3 table summarizing this data, then add a bar chart next to it."
Formatting & shapes:
- "Make the title bold and blue, and move the logo to the top-right corner."
Speaker notes:
- "Write speaker notes for each slide summarizing the key talking point."
Templates & themes:
- "Apply our corporate template to this deck without losing any of the slide content."
Visual verification:
- "Export slide 3 as an image and tell me if the chart overlaps the text box."
👥 Who Should Use This?
Perfect for:
- ✅ AI assistants and coding agents that need to build or edit
.pptx decks
- ✅ Anyone automating repetitive slide-deck workflows (reports, status decks, templates)
- ✅ Teams that want export-to-verify visual checks on every automated edit
Not suitable for:
- ❌ Server-side/headless processing (this drives a real desktop PowerPoint process)
- ❌ Linux/macOS users (Windows + PowerPoint installation required)
🚀 Quick Start
⚠️ Important: Close any open instances of the target file before automating it — the server
needs exclusive access to the presentation while it's driving PowerPoint.
🔧 CLI vs MCP Server
This project provides both a CLI and an MCP Server interface. Choose based on your use case:
| Interface | Best For | Why |
|---|
CLI (pptcli / powerpointcli.exe) | Coding agents (Copilot, Cursor, Windsurf) + scripting | Single tool, no large schemas — better for cost-sensitive, high-throughput automation. |
MCP Server (mcp-powerpoint) | Conversational AI (Claude Desktop, VS Code Chat) | Rich tool discovery, persistent session. Better for interactive, exploratory workflows. |
Manual installation:
# Primary: Download standalone executables from latest release (no .NET runtime required)
# https://github.com/sbroenne/mcp-server-powerpoint/releases/latest
# - PowerPointMcp-MCP-Server-{version}-windows.zip → extract mcp-powerpoint.exe
# - PowerPointMcp-CLI-{version}-windows.zip → extract powerpointcli.exe
# Secondary: Install via .NET tool (requires .NET 10 runtime)
dotnet tool install --global Sbroenne.PowerPointMcp.McpServer
dotnet tool install --global Sbroenne.PowerPointMcp.CLI
# After installing either way, auto-configure your coding agents:
npx add-mcp "mcp-powerpoint" --name powerpoint-mcp
# Optional: Install the agent skill for better AI guidance
npx skills add sbroenne/mcp-server-powerpoint --skill powerpoint-mcp
💡 The VS Code extension installs this skill automatically. Manual npx skills add is for other
MCP clients (Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.).
PowerPointMcp uses Windows COM automation to control the actual PowerPoint application (not
just .pptx files).
The MCP Server and CLI are two equal, first-class entry points. Each hosts its own
PowerPointMcp Service that manages presentation sessions — the MCP Server runs it
in-process (direct calls, no pipe), while the CLI uses a background daemon over a named
pipe so sessions persist across CLI invocations:
┌──────────────────────┐ ┌──────────────────────┐
│ MCP Server │ │ CLI (pptcli) │
│ (AI assistants) │ │ (coding agents) │
└──────────┬───────────┘ └──────────┬───────────┘
│ in-process │ named pipe →
│ (direct calls) │ background daemon
▼ ▼
┌──────────────────────┐ ┌──────────────────────┐
│ PowerPointMcp │ │ PowerPointMcp │
│ Service │ │ Service │
│ (session mgmt) │ │ (daemon; sessions │
│ │ │ persist across │
│ │ │ CLI invocations) │
└──────────┬───────────┘ └──────────┬───────────┘
▼ ▼
Core Commands Core Commands
▼ ▼
┌──────────────────────┐ ┌──────────────────────┐
│ PowerPoint COM API │ │ PowerPoint COM API │
│ (PowerPoint. │ │ (PowerPoint. │
│ Application) │ │ Application) │
└──────────────────────┘ └──────────────────────┘
Both entry points share the same Core Commands codebase, so every operation behaves identically.
They are separate processes, though: each runs its own PowerPointMcp Service and its own
PowerPoint instance, and they do not share live sessions with each other.
Key Benefits:
- ✅ Two equal entry points — every operation works identically through the MCP Server and
the CLI
- ✅ Persistent CLI sessions — the CLI daemon keeps presentations open across multiple
pptcli calls, so scripts don't re-open files each time
- ✅ In-process MCP calls — the MCP Server runs the service in-process (no pipe) for
low-latency automation
- ✅ Real PowerPoint automation — drives the actual
PowerPoint.Application via COM, not just
file parsing
- ✅ Export-to-verify — close the loop on every visual change with a real rendered image
⭐ GitHub Star History
Bootstrapped from exact authenticated stargazer timestamps, then updated daily from
GitHub's exact public star count. Only date/count aggregates are retained.
📚 MCP Server Guide → | CLI Guide → | Agent Skills →
📖 Complete Feature Reference •
Installation Guide •
Changelog •
Native Feature Roadmap •
Contributing •
Security •
Privacy
License: MIT License — see LICENSE
Built With: This entire project was developed using GitHub Copilot AI assistance.
Acknowledgments:
- Microsoft PowerPoint Team — for comprehensive COM automation APIs
- Model Context Protocol community — for the AI integration standard
- mcp-server-excel — the sibling project this
architecture and tooling is ported from
Other projects by the author: