# AI Skill: House-Style Word Memos (Markdown Master → .docx)

Use this skill whenever the user wants a memo, letter, or report delivered as a
Word document in a consistent house style — or when they mention "Word", "memo",
"export", or "finalise the document".

## Why this skill exists

AI assistants produce unreliable .docx output when they improvise the XML:
documents that preview fine but will not open, lose all styling, or trigger
Word's repair dialog. The cause is almost never the prose — it is silently
invalid OOXML. Three rules decide whether Word accepts a file:

1. **Namespace prefixes.** Every WordprocessingML element needs `w:` (or `r:`).
   A single bare `<vAlign>` makes Word refuse the entire file — even though the
   XML is technically well-formed.
2. **Schema element order.** Word enforces it strictly:
   - `w:pPr`: pStyle → keepNext → pBdr → spacing → ind → jc → outlineLvl
   - `w:rPr`: rFonts → b → i → color → sz → szCs → u
   - `w:tcPr`: tcW → shd → vAlign
   - `w:tblPr`: tblW → tblBorders → tblLayout → tblCellMar
   - `w:sectPr`: headerReference → footerReference → pgSz → pgMar
3. **No duplicates.** One element of each kind per container (a single
   `w:spacing` per paragraph, etc.).

Never hand-edit OOXML without re-validating afterwards.

## Workflow

1. Draft the content in **Markdown** (the master). Never author content in the
   docx directly — the master is the single source of truth; the docx is a
   mere derivative. Keep frontmatter/meta blocks out of the export unless the
   user asks for them.
2. Before building, ask the user in **one** round of questions:
   - Recipients (To), sender (From), date, status, subject line (Re)?
   - Confidentiality header (privileged & confidential / confidential / none)?
   - Portrait or landscape (wide tables)?
3. Generate the docx with the memo builder script
   (`python3 memo_builder.py <master.md> <output.docx>`):
   - Fill the `MEMO` dict (title, to, from, date, status, re, header).
   - Adapt the house-style constants if the user's style differs.
   - Only formatting, never content changes: the master is adopted 1:1; the
     only additions are the title and the To/From/Date/Status/Re box.
   - If the builder is unavailable, rebuild it following the three rules above,
     plus: (a) a `Normal` style with `w:default="1"`, (b) a styles relationship
     in `word/_rels/document.xml.rels`, (c) well-formed `.rels` parts
     (a validation that only checks `*.xml` skips the `.rels` files!).
4. **Validate before delivering.** The validation must be completely green:
   well-formedness of all parts including `.rels`, schema element order
   (monotonic), namespace prefixes, no duplicates, ZIP integrity. Well-formed
   alone is NOT sufficient.
5. Name the file `yyyymmdd_Subject.docx` (or the user's convention) and deliver
   it as a real .docx (never let a cloud drive convert it to a native doc format).
   Prefer delivery via a connected cloud folder over chat-attached downloads —
   file transfers through the chat layer can corrupt binary files; the cloud
   route has proven reliable.
   Briefly confirm that only formatting was applied and the content matches the
   master.

## House style defaults (all configurable in the builder)

A4, Arial throughout; substantive document title 18 pt bold (never
"MEMORANDUM" as title); section headings 18 pt; sub-headings 14 pt; body and
tables 10 pt; To/From/Date/Status/Re box with bold labels (no colons), light-blue
label column, grey borders, bold Re line; confidentiality marking in the page
header with a thin separator line; centred "Page x | y" footer; hyperlinks in
blue underline; table header rows shaded and repeated across pages.

## Editing an existing Word document (special case)

Edit the uploaded file directly (do not rebuild from scratch): unpack with
Python's `zipfile`, modify `word/document.xml` with `xml.etree.ElementTree`,
preserving the namespace prefixes, and repack. Only touch formatting XML; never
overwrite existing text. Any in-content change goes in as tracked changes
(`w:ins`/`w:del` with author and ISO date). New parts (e.g. `comments.xml`) must
be registered in `[Content_Types].xml` and in the document's relationships —
otherwise Word reports the file as corrupted.