Markdown → compliant Word

Turns a Markdown manuscript into a .docx whose typography comes from a declared format file. The engine is deterministic — the same manuscript and the same declarations produce a byte-identical file on every run — so do not substitute a hand-written python-docx script; run this pipeline.

Before the first export in a session, confirm the engine is available: md-to-word --version must print a version. This skill ships documentation; if the command is missing, install it with pip install md-to-word-docx, then run the check again.

Read this before the first run. The flags are not enough to drive it: the manuscript has a contract (§2) and the format file has a closed vocabulary (§3), and neither can be guessed from --help. Work through §1 once, then the commands are enough for everything after. An identical copy ships inside the package as guide.md (md-to-word --guide); reading one copy suffices.

The facts live in the manual. This file is the order of work. md-to-word --contract prints the manual's absolute path (Chinese or English, following the manuscript), the built-in preset paths and a one-screen contract summary. When a spelling is not certain, read the manual rather than guess: every word outside the vocabulary is a hard error with a line number.

The manual ships as one file, md-to-word --contract prints its path. §9 is the thesis part: cover and front matter, section and page numbering, chapter/appendix numbering, and --base-template.

1. The work, in order

1. Confirm requirements & decide format (§3): built-in preset (zh-academic, en-nature), an edited copy of one, or a custom format file supplied by the user (or extracted from a reference .docx).
2. Normalize the manuscript: Standard Markdown natively represents headings and body text, but structures beyond standard Markdown (captions, TOC, page breaks, abstract, display math) must follow the contract in §2. Map what the source actually contains; do not invent missing elements. Write a new file; never edit the user's original in place.
3. Export (§4).
4. Read the gates (§4), fix the reported lines, export again. Repeat until the exit code is 0.
5. Report (§5): what format was applied, what the run warned about, and that the layout still needs a look in Word.

Nothing here accepts arbitrary Markdown and returns a finished document: a preset supplies formatting, not missing structure. Pre-flight stops with a line number instead of emitting a document that looks acceptable while its formatting was never mapped.

2. The manuscript contract

Headings — #, ##, ###, consecutive and unskipped; a heading that carries its own number (1., 2.1) needs as many # as its number has levels. Heading levels are set by # only.

Style lines — a line starting with %% sets that paragraph's style. One line is one paragraph, ended by a blank line, no closing fence. Names come from a closed list, valid in either language; these are the ones that come up in almost every document:

Full list: manual §3.4.

Paragraphs — one line is one paragraph; consecutive lines are never joined. A break inside a paragraph (an address, verse, a long title) is written as a backslash or two spaces at the end of the line: it becomes a line break within the same paragraph, not a new paragraph. Suspected wrapping — a plain line without closing punctuation followed by another plain line — is reported as a warning with the line numbers; short paragraphs written one per line are correct as they are.

Title, author, abstract and keywords go in the body as style lines, never in YAML — their position on the page is the author's decision and YAML has no position. Pre-flight blocks those keys and prints the exact line to write instead.

YAML holds only position-independent configuration: bibliography:, csl:, crossref: (link-citations: false drops the in-text hyperlink).

Equations — $$...$$ {#eq-name} on its own line, referenced as @eq-name. Chinese manuscripts get 「式/图/表」 prefixes and （1）numbering, English ones Equation/Figure/Table and (1); crossref: chapters: true switches to per-chapter numbering. \tag{} is blocked.

Citations — [@key] parenthetical, @key narrative, resolved from bibliography: + csl:. A .bib is mandatory once the manuscript cites: handwritten reference lists are not supported, and [@key] without bibliography: would be printed literally.

Figures and tables — ![](path/img.png){width=13cm}, caption in its own %% Image Caption paragraph; table caption above, note below. Do not put {#fig-...} labels on images. Column widths follow the separator row's dash lengths.

Block markers — three, each on its own line with blank lines around it: {{< pagebreak >}}, {{< toc >}}, {{< section page_number=lowerRoman start=1 >}} (Chinese parameters 页码= 起始= also work). A section marker closes the section above it; never add a page break next to one.

Unsupported Markdown is blocked with a replacement, never printed literally — the list is manual §2.8.

3. The format file

Two different things can be done with a .docx the user supplies — keep them apart:

Reading it gives a reusable format file; pouring into it keeps that one school's cover. Neither replaces the other, and a thesis usually wants both.

Check for an existing format file before writing one — the user may already have one beside the manuscript, or a target .docx worth reverse-engineering.

0. Starting from nothing — md-to-word init writes a complete preset copy plus a one-page manuscript that exports as-is. Useful when the user has no format file and no template.
1. Built-in preset — zh-academic or en-nature. Use as-is when the user has no custom template or spec; it provides a complete, compliant baseline out of the box.
2. Copy and edit a preset — change only the lines the user mentioned. Field order is fixed: font, size, bold, italic, alignment, line spacing, space before, space after, indent. Every style line must be complete; missing fields are errors.
3. Reverse-engineer a target .docx — md-to-word-template target.docx -o format.txt, then work through the "to confirm" list at the end of the draft.

Each property has exactly one accepted spelling, plus its Chinese or English counterpart; anything else is a hard error with a line number (manual §3.1). format.txt in these instructions means the format file — any filename works, -f takes it.

Citation style comes from csl: with a bundled name (manual §7) or a path to the user's own CSL. Without csl:, Chinese manuscripts get GB/T 7714 numeric and everything else APA 7th.

Without -f the only file picked up is one named exactly format.txt beside the manuscript; anything else there is ignored and named in a reminder. With no format.txt, the preset follows the manuscript's language.

4. Export, then the gates

md-to-word manuscript.md -o manuscript.docx                    # preset by language
md-to-word manuscript.md -f format.txt -o manuscript.docx      # explicit format
md-to-word --guide                                             # this file, printed (pip-only entry)
md-to-word manuscript.md --contract                            # contract + guide, manual and preset paths

Run every command from the manuscript's directory: relative image and .bib paths resolve against it. Add --pdf (macOS with Word) to expand fields and spot-check the result.

Add --json whenever the result has to be read back programmatically: stdout then carries one JSON object — ok, returncode, input, output, pdf, lang, messages, errors — while progress logs stay on stderr. The keys are fixed; the sentences inside them follow the manuscript's language.

Two gate levels, split by "would the mistake be visible afterwards" (criteria: manual §5):

• Blocking — invisible afterwards (dropped content, literal syntax, unmapped formatting); fix the line, never --no-check.
• Warning — visible but non-compliant (over-wide image, distant caption, skipped level); report it.

Exit codes: 0 every gate passed; 1 manuscript, gate or dependency problem; 2 a usage error (bad flags or a missing argument); 3 the .docx was written but the optional --pdf proof was skipped. Messages follow the manuscript's language.

5. Verify before delivery

• Confirm the .docx exists and the command exited 0.
• Report the preset or format file, the citation style, and anything the run warned about.
• Say plainly that the layout still needs a manual check in Word. The engine verifies text and structure; row heights, column widths and where equations and captions settle are only visible in a real renderer.
• With a TOC, {style-title} headers or per-section page numbers, run once with --pdf and check the first page, the widest table, an equation-heavy page and the references.

6. Boundaries

• No custom cover pages, merged cells, multi-column text, inline text colour or text-wrapped figures. Export the body, then complete those in Word.
• Only equation cross-references are supported ({#eq-x} + @eq-x); figure and table numbers are typed into the caption.
• Sum and integral limits stay to the right of the symbol in numbered equations (Word stacks limits only in display math). Content and symbols are correct; only the arrangement differs.
• TOC page numbers and chapter headers are Word fields; Word asks once whether to update them.

Full statements: manual §6 (limits) and §8 (symptom → fix).

7. Scope

This skill compiles a finished manuscript into a .docx and nothing else. Drafting, rewriting, polishing, searching for sources and verifying reference metadata belong to whatever writing tools the user already works with: take the Markdown they hand you, produce the .docx, return it. The interface in both directions is a Markdown file plus a format.txt.

8. What this file may rely on

• the commands md-to-word, md-to-word-template and init; every flag named in this file (-o, -f, --preset, --contract, --guide, --version, --json, --pdf, --lang) keeps its name and meaning
• exit codes 0 / 1 / 2 / 3, and the JSON keys under --json
• the manuscript contract in §2, the vocabulary in §3, the preset names zh-academic and en-nature, and the fixed file name format.txt

Everything else — message wording, the layout inside the installed package, the version number — may change. Never parse the prose of a message: pass --json and read the keys.