stetdoc

[stetdoc. Let it stand.]

stetdoc is how AI agents work in Word. Every change your agent makes lands in Word as a tracked change with its name on it, and everything it didn't touch comes back exactly as it was.

# macOSbrew install clauseo-ai/tap/stetdoc# Linuxcurl -fsSL https://stetdoc.clauseo.chat/install.sh | sh# Windowsuv tool install stetdoc
stetdoc init

stetdoc init installs the skill for the agents you pick, or for every agent it finds when there's no terminal. Every other way to install is in the channels below.

Read the docs · Quickstart · Changelog · Free and open source, MIT or Apache-2.0

$ stetdoc replace msa.docx 'due within thirty (30) days' 'due within forty-five (45) days'replace "due within thirty (30) days" with "due within forty-five (45) days": once, at p145 (clause 11.1)applied 1 operation, tracked as Claude 2026-11-02T07:44:07Z. base 96c462d4a556723b:0:96c462d4a556723b0 replace p145: deletion #54, insertion #55p145 {style "First Paragraph"} 11.1 Payment … shall be due within {--thirty (30)--}{#54 C}{++forty-five (45)++}{#55 C} days …validated 1 unit: no problems, and this file needs no separate check.wrote msa.edited.docxmsa.docx is unchanged. Run the next edit on msa.edited.docx to build on this one, …

_{stetdoc 0.9.1 on a Harvey LAB supply agreement, with the long lines cut short. {--…--} is the deletion and {++…++} the insertion, each a Word revision by Claude.}

Word found unreadable content.

Every agent that edits a .docx's XML gets this message from Word sooner or later. Word splits a sentence across many runs and stores tracked changes as XML structure. It refuses a file whose elements fall out of schema order. One slip in the XML and the document won't open.

stetdoc checks every edit against the schema and Word's own rules before it writes a byte. A batch of edits applies in full or not at all. Bad input, a hostile file included, fails with a stable error code. stetdoc never panics, hangs or touches the network.

Fastest on every model.

We gave agents eight contract tasks and three long markups, five ways: with stetdoc, with no plugin, with Anthropic's docx skill, with Anthropic's legal plugin and with Adeu. Then we opened every file they wrote in Word. The agents using stetdoc were fastest on all three models.

[Median time per task. On Claude Haiku 5.5, stetdoc took 21 s and the other setups 41 to 45 s. On Claude Opus 5.5, stetdoc took 25 s and the others 37 to 56 s. On Gemini 3.8 Flash, stetdoc took 135 s and the others 274 to 538 s.]

• 0 of 118 stetdoc runs left Word anything to repair.
• 6 of 6 long Harvey LAB markups passed their checks and opened clean in Word, on every model.
• 5 ms for each stetdoc call to start.

_{docx-agent-bench: 639 runs in Claude Code 2.1.311 and Antigravity CLI 1.4.8, every file opened in Microsoft Word for Mac 16.114.3. How it was graded.}

Open, save, same bytes.

Run a document through stetdoc without editing it and you get the identical file back, byte for byte. Edit one clause and only that clause's elements change. Styles, numbering, comments, other people's tracked changes and macros stay where their authors left them.

$ stetdoc unpack msa.docx && stetdoc pack msa.stet -o roundtrip.docx$ cmp msa.docx roundtrip.docx && echo identicalidentical

Every build checks this on 306 documents, and every night random edits run on 48,595 public documents. FIDELITY.md says, feature by feature, what stetdoc keeps exactly, what it normalizes, what it shows read-only and what it leaves out.

It knows where 11.1 is.

Lawyers cite clauses by number. Word works those numbers out when it draws the page, so they appear nowhere in the file. stetdoc computes them, and a search hands your agent the clause, a stable paragraph ref and the exact text.

$ stetdoc view msa.docx --find 'thirty' --find 'governing law'p81 {§3.3} …be submitted to the Seller not less than thirty (30) days prior to the first day of the… {~ "thirty" 2}p145 {§11.1} …each Shipment of Products shall be due within thirty (30) days from the date… {~ "thirty" 1}p268 22.7 Governing Law of the Arbitration Agreement. This arbitration agreement contained in this… {~ "governing law" 1}{position: p81..p466 of find "thirty" (13), "governing law" (3): 16 matches in 15 blocks (15 of 15 blocks)}

_{Three of the 16 hits, with the long lines cut short. This block leaves out the other 13 and the clause headings stetdoc prints above them.}

Twelve matches is not one.

replace matches text the way it reads, across bold, italics and run breaks. When the text appears more than once, stetdoc writes nothing and lists every match with its clause. Missing text gets the same refusal. stetdoc also refuses an edit aimed at a paragraph that changed after the agent read it, so a change never lands in the wrong place.

$ stetdoc replace msa.docx 'thirty (30) days' 'forty-five (45) days'error[ambiguous_match]: "thirty (30) days" is in the document 12 times, and it must be there once:  p81 (clause 3.3) …d to the Seller not less than [thirty (30) days] prior to the first day of the…  p145 (clause 11.1) … Products shall be due within [thirty (30) days] from the date of the Bill of …next: Nothing was applied, so retry at once, with no dry run: to change every one, pass --all; to pick one place, …

_{Two of the 12 places, with the long last line cut short. stetdoc lists all 12.}

Hands off the XML.

stetdoc gives your agent the document as text, with a ref on every paragraph and a number on every clause. The zip and its XML stay with stetdoc. In Claude Code, the plugin adds a hook that stops Claude from unzipping a .docx, scripting it with python-docx or rewriting its XML. The only way into the file is the one stetdoc checks.

In Claude Code 2.1.275 or later, one line installs the plugin. It carries the skill and the hook. The binary must still be on the PATH, because Claude Code runs the command rather than MCP.

/plugin install stetdoc --marketplace clauseo-ai/stetdoc

One install for every agent you run.

stetdoc init installs the skill for the agents you pick, or for the ones it detects. It knows Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, OpenCode, OpenClaw, Hermes Agent, Grok Build, cmx2, Antigravity CLI, GitHub Copilot CLI, Amp and Factory. It still installs for Gemini CLI, which Google retired in favour of Antigravity CLI.

stetdoc init --project   # in this project, plus a short block in AGENTS.mdstetdoc init --list      # what is installed, and wherestetdoc init --remove    # take it out againstetdoc skills get core  # the full skill, embedded in the binary

Agents that take tools instead of a shell get the same commands over the Model Context Protocol from stetdoc mcp. stetdoc init --mcp prints how to register it with each agent. Install the skill with the server. Without the skill, an agent whose server fails to start falls back to unzipping the .docx and editing its XML. Use stetdoc with your agent has the setup for each one. To serve stetdoc mcp to cloud apps, with auth and TLS, see Self-hosting the MCP server.

Install stetdoc

Pick any channel. Every one installs the same binary.

# Homebrew, macOS and Linuxbrew install clauseo-ai/tap/stetdoc
# Install script, macOS and Linuxcurl -fsSL https://stetdoc.clauseo.chat/install.sh | sh
# uv or pipx, macOS, Linux and Windowsuv tool install stetdocpipx install stetdoc
# npmnpm install -g stetdoc
# Cargo, from sourcecargo install stetdoc --locked

The uv and pipx wheel holds the native binary, so no Python runs after the install. The install script checks the SHA-256 and installs to ~/.local/bin. npm swaps its Node launcher for the binary when install scripts run.

An agent can run stetdoc dozens of times in one task. Homebrew, uv, pipx and the install script put the binary itself on your PATH, so each call starts in about 5 ms. Through npx, every call starts Node and npm first, which costs a tenth of a second or more. Keep npx stetdoc mcp for the MCP server, which starts once per session. uvx stetdoc runs stetdoc once without installing it. Install covers Windows, updating, uninstalling and pinning a version.

The commands

# Every revision has an author. Set it here, or save yours once with stetdoc init.export STETDOC_AUTHOR="Jane Doe"# Each hit shows its ref, its clause and the exact text.stetdoc view contract.docx --find 'net 30' --find 'governing law'# Writes contract.edited.docx. The old text must appear once, or nothing changes.stetdoc replace contract.docx 'net 30' 'net 45'stetdoc comment contract.edited.docx 'Liability Cap' 'Is this mutual?' --in-place# A redline of any two versions.stetdoc compare old.docx new.docx -o redline.docx

An edit writes NAME.edited.docx beside the input, then NAME.edited-2.docx, and never overwrites. -o FILE names the output and --in-place writes back. Receipts and views name the tracked changes other people made, so the agent can report them.

For longer work, unpack a working copy and edit its readable files with any tool, string replacement and apply_patch included:

stetdoc unpack contract.docx        # writes contract.stet/$EDITOR contract.stet/document.md   # edit the text after each refstetdoc check contract.stet         # the redline pack will write, validatedstetdoc pack contract.stet          # writes contract.edited.docx with real tracked changes

Inserting paragraphs, formatting, and accepting or rejecting revisions go to stetdoc edit as a batch of operations. How stetdoc works explains working copies, refs, base tokens and receipts. The CLI reference lists every command and flag, such as --clause, --range, --all and --manual, with examples that run as tests.

Build on stetdoc

The engine is a Rust library, stetdoc-core, built around one handle:

let mut doc = Document::open(bytes, &OpenOptions::default())?;let view = doc.view(&ViewSpec::default())?;// Tracked by default.let receipt = doc.edit(Edit::ops(batch, stamp))?;// Unedited, it returns the input bytes.let saved = doc.save()?;

Node and Bun use it through the npm package @clauseo/stetdoc, with TypeScript types generated from the engine's definitions. Its textEditor is a backend for Claude's text editor tool, as the crate stetdoc-editor is in Rust. Errors carry a stable code, a message and a next hint, and the npm package throws them as StetdocError.

Build on stetdoc compares the crate, the npm package, the CLI and MCP for products. The npm package has its own guide, crates/stetdoc-napi/npm/README.md, and the error reference lists every code.

Repository

• ARCHITECTURE.md: the map for anyone new to the code
• GLOSSARY.md: what each domain term means
• docs/decisions/ and docs/design/: the decision records and the design notes behind each module
• AGENTS.md and CONTRIBUTING.md: the commands, the rules the checks enforce, and how to make a change and get it reviewed
• SECURITY.md: how to report a vulnerability, and how we test hostile input
• CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md: how we expect people to treat each other here

Build and verify with cargo xtask check. Besides formatting, lints and unit tests, it runs the laws on the curated corpus of 306 documents. Every unedited round trip must come back byte-identical. On each document, 50 seeded random edit batches must keep the laws: they change only what they edit, the edits stick, accepting or rejecting them restores the expected text, and the file stays valid. Every night they run on 48,595 public documents in CI, and CI fuzzes all four targets on every pull request.

Licence

You can use stetdoc under either the Apache License, Version 2.0 or the MIT licence, at your option. See NOTICE.

_{Stet is the proofreader's mark for "let it stand". It goes under a word that was struck out by mistake, and the word stays. stetdoc is open source, from Clauseo.}