Architecture¶

PowerPoint MCP Server uses Windows COM automation to control the actual PowerPoint application — not just .pptx files. Because it drives PowerPoint's official COM API (PowerPoint.Application), every edit is rendered and saved by PowerPoint itself, so there's zero risk of producing a file PowerPoint can't open — and any visual change can be exported to an image and verified by a vision-capable AI assistant.

Two equal entry points¶

The project ships both an MCP Server and a CLI. They are first-class, interchangeable entry points that share the same core, so every operation behaves identically no matter which you use:

• MCP Server hosts the service in-process — direct method calls, no pipe — which suits conversational, interactive AI clients.
• CLI (pptcli) talks to a background daemon over a named pipe, so sessions persist across invocations — ideal for scripted, high-throughput automation by coding agents.

The CLI stores an atomic, pipe-scoped ownership record for the daemon and each PowerPoint process. Every identity includes both its PID and process start time, so forced cleanup cannot mistake a reused PID for a process owned by PowerPointMcp. If ownership cannot be proven, cleanup fails without terminating the process.

flowchart TD
    A["AI assistants<br/>(Claude, Copilot, ChatGPT)"] -->|MCP protocol| B["MCP Server<br/>in-process service"]
    C["Coding agents<br/>(Copilot, Cursor, Windsurf)"] -->|pptcli| D["CLI<br/>named pipe → background daemon"]
    B --> E["Core Commands<br/>(shared codebase)"]
    D --> E
    E --> F["PowerPoint COM API<br/>(PowerPoint.Application)"]

Shared core, separate processes¶

Both entry points build on the same Core Commands codebase, so a feature added to one is automatically available to the other with the same parameters, defaults and validation. They run as separate processes, each managing its own PowerPoint instance, and do not share live sessions with each other.

Sessions¶

Every open presentation is a session identified by a presentation_session_id, obtained from presentation(action="open", filePath=...) / presentation(action="create", filePath=...) (MCP Server) or pptcli session open <path> / pptcli session create <path> (CLI). Tools and commands operate on a session until it is explicitly closed, and nothing is written to disk until presentation(action="close", presentation_session_id=..., save=true) / pptcli session close <id> --save is called.

Ready to install? See the installation guide, or dive into the MCP Server and CLI references.