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Helx

The universal artifact runtime for AI agents. One engine that reads, creates, edits, validates, diffs and renders the formats agents actually work with — DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, PDF, Markdown, HTML, CSV — plus charts, diagrams, templates, cross-format conversion and CSV data ops. Exposed three ways:

  • CLIhelx for humans and shell scripts

  • MCP server — 20 tools over stdio for AI agents (Claude, Cursor, etc.)

  • TypeScript SDK — a clean Artifact facade for your own code

npm version license PRs welcome

one model, every file
create → read → edit → save → validate → diff → render → convert

Every artifact below was created and edited by Helx itself, then previewed by Helx. Click any card to open the file.

DOCX report

XLSX sales

PPTX deck

PDF quarterly

Markdown playbook

HTML landing

CSV customers

DOCX letter (template merge)

Diagram

Charts generated with helx chart:

Revenue by region Trend Mix

The gallery is produced by npx tsx scripts/make-gallery.ts — it opens every demo file through the SDK and rasterizes a styled SVG preview to PNG with @resvg/resvg-js.

Related MCP server: LibreOffice MCP Tools

Why Helx over OfficeCLI

OfficeCLI is a strong Word/Excel/PPT editor for AI agents. Helx goes further:

Capability

Helx

OfficeCLI

Formats

DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, PDF, Markdown, HTML, CSV

Word, Excel, PPT only

Cross-format conversion

helx convert report.docx report.md — DOCX↔MD/HTML/PDF, XLSX↔CSV/HTML/MD, PPTX→MD/HTML/DOCX, PDF→MD/HTML/DOCX, CSV↔XLSX

no

Charts & diagrams

helx chart (bar/line/pie/donut/area/scatter), helx diagram (mermaid-style flowcharts)

no

Templates

{{var}}/{{#each}}/{{#if}} + in-place DOCX merge

DOCX merge only

CSV data ops

analyze, filter, sort, group, aggregate, profile, dedupe, clean

no

PDF

create, extract text, merge, split

no

Renders for agent vision

DOCX/XLSX/CSV→HTML, PPTX→SVG, PDF→text, MD→HTML, charts→SVG

render → PNG

Interfaces

CLI + MCP (20 tools) + TypeScript SDK

CLI + MCP

Agent paths

uniform /p[2], /sheet[X]/cell[C3], css:.hero, ... across all formats

per-format

Validation & diff

validate + semantic diff on every engine

no

Helx also ships stat (document statistics) and move (reorder paragraphs/rows/slides/shapes) across every interface.

Install

npm install -g helx        # CLI + MCP server
# or
npm install helx           # SDK for your own TypeScript/JavaScript project

Then helx --help or add the MCP server to your AI client:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "helx": { "command": "helx", "args": ["mcp"] }
  }
}

That's it — any AI model or agent (Claude, Cursor, Cline, LangChain, custom scripts) can create, read, edit and render real office and web documents.

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/Asno-dev/Helx.git
cd Helx
npm install
npm run build        # tsc → dist/
npm test             # 71 integration checks (tsx test/smoke.ts)

Node >= 18 (dynamic ESM import requires >= 12.20; verified on Node 22).

Quick start (CLI)

# Create a DOCX from a JSON spec (type inferred from the extension)
helx create report.docx '{"title":"Q3 Report","paragraphs":["Revenue grew 20% to $52k."],"tables":[{"headers":["Metric","Value"],"rows":[["ARR","4.2M"]]}]}'

# Inspect the structure as a path-addressed tree
helx inspect report.docx

# Read / write a single value via an agent path
helx get report.docx "/p[1]"
helx set report.docx "/table[0]/row[1]/cell[1]" "4.5M"

# Insert / remove / move, then validate and render to HTML for a visual check
helx insert report.docx "/p[2]" '{"text":"New paragraph","style":"Heading 2"}'
helx remove report.docx "/p[4]"
helx move report.docx "/p[2]" "/p[5]" --after
helx stat report.docx
helx validate report.docx
helx render report.docx --out report-preview.html

# Cross-format conversion (any direction, any engine)
helx convert report.docx report.md
helx convert report.md report.pdf
helx convert sales.xlsx sales.csv
helx convert deck.pptx deck.md

# Spreadsheets
helx create data.xlsx '{"sheet":"Revenue","rows":[["Quarter","Amount"],["Q1","10"]]}'
helx get data.xlsx "/sheet[Revenue]/cell[B2]"
helx analyze data.csv
helx filter data.csv '{"col":"score","op":"gt","value":80}'

# Decks
helx create deck.pptx '{"title":"Investor Deck","subtitle":"Q3 2026","bullets":["Market size: $10B"]}'
helx get deck.pptx "/slide[0]/shape[1]"

# PDFs (create via model; merge/split for structure)
helx create a.pdf '{"title":"Doc A","sections":[{"heading":"Intro","text":"Hello."}]}'
helx merge merged.pdf a.pdf b.pdf
helx split page1.pdf merged.pdf --pages 1
helx extract merged.pdf

# Charts, diagrams, templates
helx chart '{"type":"bar","labels":["Q1","Q2"],"values":[10,12]}' --out chart.svg
helx diagram 'graph TD; A[Start] --> B[End];' --out diagram.svg
helx template 'Hello {{name}}' '{"name":"Ada"}'

# Run the MCP server (for AI agents)
helx mcp

Agent paths

Every artifact exposes a stable, path-addressed tree so agents can read/write any value:

Format

Example paths

DOCX

/p[2], /p[1]/text, /table[0]/row[1]/cell[0]

XLSX

/sheet[Revenue]/cell[C24], /sheet[0]/row[3]

PPTX

/slide[0]/shape[1], /slide[0]/shape[2]/text

PDF

/page[0], /page[0]/text

Markdown

/heading[0], /p[2]

HTML

css:h1, css:.summary > p

CSV

/row[3]/cell[1]

set, insert, remove and move mutate the model and save() round-trips it back to the file.

Cross-format conversion

convert walks a real content model — it is not string surgery:

From \ To

DOCX

XLSX

PPTX

PDF

MD

HTML

CSV

DOCX

XLSX

PPTX

PDF

MD

HTML

CSV

const md = await Artifact.create('markdown', { root: { children: [] } });
await md.insert('/node', { type: 'heading', depth: 1, text: 'Hello' });
const docx = await md.convertTo('docx');   // real DOCX bytes
const html = await docx.convertTo('html');

MCP server

helx mcp runs a Model Context Protocol server over stdio. It exposes 20 tools:

create_artifact, inspect, get, set, insert, remove, move, convert, stat, render, validate, diff, merge_pdf, split_pdf, extract, analyze_csv, filter_csv, chart, diagram, template

Tools are filesystem-path based — the agent passes a file path and a JSON value, and the server reads, edits, saves, or renders the artifact. Register it in a client like Claude Desktop:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "helx": { "command": "node", "args": ["/path/to/helx/dist/cli/index.js", "mcp"] }
  }
}

TypeScript SDK

import { Artifact, chartToSvg, dataFilter, renderTemplate } from 'helx';

// Create, edit, save
const doc = await Artifact.create('docx', {
  title: 'Report',
  paragraphs: ['Revenue grew 20% to $52k.'],
  tables: [{ headers: ['Metric', 'Value'], rows: [['ARR', '4.2M']] }],
});
await doc.set('/p[0]/text', 'Updated headline');
await doc.insert('/p[1]', { text: 'Inserted paragraph' });
const bytes = await doc.save();
await fs.writeFile('report.docx', bytes);

// Open any file, regardless of format
const art = await Artifact.open('data.xlsx', buffer);
console.log(await art.get('/sheet[Revenue]/cell[B2]'));
console.log(await art.inspect());

// Convert to another format, get stats, move elements
const md = await art.convertTo('markdown');
console.log(await art.stat());
await art.move('/sheet[Revenue]/row[3]', '/sheet[Revenue]/row[1]', 'before');

// Validation and diff
console.log(await art.validate());   // { status, issues[] }
console.log(await art.diff(other));  // DiffEntry[]

// Generator utilities
const svg = chartToSvg({ type: 'pie', labels: ['A', 'B'], values: [3, 7] });
const rows = dataFilter(data, { col: 'score', op: 'gt', value: 80 });
const out = renderTemplate('Hi {{name}}', { name: 'Ada' });

Also exported: convertArtifact, canConvert, mergePdfs, splitPdf, dataProfile, dataSort, dataAggregate, dataDedupe, dataClean, parseDiagram, diagramToSvg, renderDocxTemplate, detectType, engineForFile, registerEngine, engines.

Architecture

src/
  core/
    types.ts        # shared model contracts (Engine, ArtifactModel, ValidationReport, ...)
    base.ts         # BaseEngine with typed dispatch for set/insert/remove/move
    paths.ts        # agent-path parser (/p[0], /sheet[X], css:..., /row[n]/cell[n])
    utils.ts        # LCS diff, diffText/diffSeqMerged, HTML document shell
    convert.ts      # cross-format converter (content-model based, 19 directions)
    index.ts        # engine registry + Artifact facade (create/open/save/...)
    engines/
      docx.ts       # paragraphs, heading styles, tables
      xlsx.ts       # sheets, cells, formula read-back
      pptx.ts       # slides, shapes, text boxes
      pdf.ts        # create (pdfkit), extract text (pdfjs-dist), merge/split (pdf-lib)
      markdown.ts   # remark/rehype round-trip
      html.ts       # cheerio DOM editing + css: selectors
      csv.ts        # rows + data ops: profile/filter/sort/group/aggregate/clean/dedupe
      chart.ts      # SVG charts (bar, line, pie, donut, area, scatter, grouped bar, stacked bar)
      diagram.ts    # mermaid-style flowchart → SVG
      template.ts   # {{var}}/{{#each}}/{{#if}} + in-place DOCX placeholder merge
  cli/index.ts      # helx CLI (commander)
  mcp/index.ts      # MCP stdio server (20 tools)
  sdk/index.ts      # public package surface
scripts/make-gallery.ts   # README gallery generator
examples/demo/            # all demo files created by Helx itself

Each file engine implements one contract: read(bytes) → model, write(model) → bytes, plus create(spec), get/set/insert/remove/move(path), inspect(), validate(), diff(other), render(). The Artifact facade keeps the original bytes so immutable formats (PDF) can still be round-tripped after edits to other formats.

Notes & design decisions

  • PDF is immutable by model: text extraction is read-only (pdfjs-dist; pdf-parse was dropped because its bundled pdf.js 2.x cannot parse pdfkit output). Structure operations use pdf-lib: mergePdfs and splitPdf.

  • Renders to HTML for the agent's vision loop: DOCX/XLSX/CSV → HTML tables, PPTX → per-slide SVG, PDF → per-page text, Markdown → HTML, charts/diagrams → SVG.

  • helx chart, helx diagram, helx template are generator utilities; they are not registered file engines.

  • Conversion is model-based: converters read each format's real model (DocxModel, XlsxModel, ...) and produce another engine's spec, so convert preserves structure rather than pasting raw text.

License

Apache-2.0 — see LICENSE.

Contributing

Bug reports, feature requests and pull requests are welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md for the dev workflow, conventions and Code of Conduct.

A
license - permissive license
Not graded
quality - not tested
C
maintenance

Maintenance

Maintainers
Response time
Release cycle
Releases (12mo)
Commit activity

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