pptx://¶

Status: ✅ Native authoring + read/convert. pptx:// is a Helix-native surface for Microsoft PowerPoint .pptx (Office Open XML / PresentationML) presentations.

Powered by a pure-Go OOXML writer built into Helix — no library, no cgo, no external service. The whole .pptx package (content types, theme, slide master, slide layouts, notes master, slides, media) is generated from the standard library (archive/zip + string assembly).

pptx:// complements docling:// (which reads Office documents into Markdown/JSON but cannot write one): pptx:// is the authoring half — it creates, converts and reads .pptx decks. It is the presentation counterpart to docx:// (Word) and xlsx:// (Excel).

URI shape¶

pptx:///abs/path/to/deck.pptx?op=extract_text
pptx://relative/out.pptx?op=create
pptx://?file=/tmp/out.pptx&op=from_markdown

The path may be inside the authority (pptx://out.pptx), absolute (pptx:///abs/out.pptx), or supplied via file= or the HelixPptxFile header (per-message override).

Operations (op=)¶

Write ops (create/from_markdown) stamp HelixPptxFileWritten (absolute path). Read ops stamp HelixPptxFilePath / HelixPptxFileName.

Presentation model (op=create)¶

The body is a JSON/Starlang object the writer walks. The slide array may be keyed slides or body (both accepted). Optional deck metadata: title, subject, author, company, and widescreen (default true = 16:9; false = 4:3).

- set-body:
    starlang: |
      {
        title: "Q3 Review",
        author: "Helix",
        slides: [
          { layout: "title", title: "Quarterly Review", subtitle: "FY2026 Q3" },
          { layout: "titleContent", title: "Highlights", bullets: [
              { text: "Revenue up 15 percent", bold: true },
              { text: "Two new regions", level: 1 } ] },
          { layout: "titleContent", title: "Numbers", table: {
              headers: ["Metric", "Value"],
              rows: [ ["Growth", "15%"], ["Churn", "2%"] ] } },
          { layout: "twoContent", title: "Compare",
            left:  [ { text: "Pros" }, { text: "Fast", level: 1 } ],
            right: [ { text: "Cons" }, { text: "New", level: 1 } ] },
          { layout: "titleContent", title: "Screenshot",
            image: { path: "/tmp/chart.png" },
            notes: "Explain the dashboard." }
        ]
      }
- target: "pptx://x?op=create"

Slide layouts (layout)¶

All six standard layouts are emitted into every deck's slide master, so the file opens in PowerPoint with the correct layout gallery.

Slide fields¶

A bullet is { text, level, bold, italic, color (RRGGBB), size (pt), noBullet }. An image is { path | data (base64) + format (png|jpeg|gif), x, y, w, h (inches), alt } — omit geometry to fit the body area. A table is { headers[], rows[][], widths[] (inches), x, y, w }; the header row is styled (fill + bold) and body rows are banded.

When a body slide has both bullets and a table/image, the bullets take the top half and the visual the bottom half automatically; use explicit x/y to override.

Templates / outlines (op=from_markdown)¶

Feed a Markdown outline and each ATX heading (# …) starts a new slide; list items and plain lines below it become that slide's bullets, with two spaces of indent per bullet level. --- on its own line forces a new slide. This is the natural “agent emits Markdown → deck” path.

- set-header: { name: HelixPptxFile, starlang: 'headers["out-path"]' }
- target: "pptx://x?op=from_markdown"   # body is the Markdown string

URI parameters¶

Headers¶

Per-message overrides (in): HelixPptxFile, HelixPptxOp.

Producer outputs (out): HelixPptxFileWritten (write ops), HelixPptxFilePath / HelixPptxFileName (read ops), HelixPptxTextLength (extract_text), HelixPptxSlideCount / HelixPptxNotesCount / HelixPptxImageCount (info).

Example routes¶

Author a deck at the end of an HTTP request:

workflows:
  - id: generate-deck
    trigger:
      uri: http-server://0.0.0.0:8092/deck
    steps:
      - set-header:
          name: HelixPptxFile
          starlang: payload.path
      - set-body:
          starlang: '{ slides: [ { layout: "title", title: "Report" } ] }'
      - target: "pptx://x?op=create"

Turn agent-authored Markdown into slides:

workflows:
  - id: markdown-to-slides
    trigger:
      uri: seda://deck-export
    steps:
      - set-header: { name: HelixPptxFile, starlang: 'headers["out-path"]' }
      - target: "pptx://x?op=from_markdown"   # body is the Markdown outline

Extract text from dropped .pptx files for RAG / search:

workflows:
  - id: ingest-slides
    trigger:
      uri: "file:///var/data/inbox?include=.*\\.pptx$&recursive=true&delay=2s&noop=false"
    steps:
      - set-header: { name: HelixPptxFile, starlang: 'headers["HelixFilePath"]' }
      - target: "pptx://x?op=extract_text"
      - target: seda://index-document

Related Helix surfaces¶