Claude Word Assistant

Interact with Claude directly from Microsoft Word — selected text, document analysis, section navigation — via a sidebar panel.

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For users (no technical knowledge required)

Prerequisites

• macOS
• Microsoft Word (desktop)
• Claude CLI installed and logged in

To check if Claude CLI is installed, open Terminal and type claude --version. If you see a version number, you're good.

Installation

1. Download Claude Word Assistant.zip from the latest release
2. Unzip it — you get Claude Word Assistant.app
3. Move it to your Applications folder
4. Double-click to launch it

On first launch:

• A setup wizard will run automatically
• macOS will ask for your password once (to trust the local SSL certificate)
• The plugin will be registered in Word automatically

Using the plugin

1. The ✦ icon appears in your menu bar — click it to start/stop the server
2. Open Word
3. Go to Insert → Add-ins → My Add-ins → click Claude Assistant
4. The sidebar opens on the right

What you can do:

• Select text in your document → click "Refresh" → ask Claude about it
• Load the full document → Claude analyses its structure
• Type a section number (e.g. 1.2 or Article 3) to ask about a specific section
• The current section is detected automatically as you move through the document

Troubleshooting

• Server won't start — make sure Claude CLI is installed (claude --version in Terminal)
• Plugin not visible in Word — try Insert → Add-ins → Refresh
• Logs — click ✦ in the menu bar → "Open logs"
• Certificate error — click ✦ → "Reinstall certificate"

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For developers

Architecture

Word (Office.js taskpane)
    ↓ HTTPS POST
FastAPI server (uvicorn + local SSL)
    ↓ stdin/stdout
Claude CLI

Requirements

• Python 3.8+
• Claude CLI installed and authenticated

Setup

git clone <repo>
cd claude-word
bash scripts/setup.sh

This will:

• Create a Python virtualenv in server/venv/
• Install dependencies
• Generate a self-signed SSL certificate
• Trust it in your macOS keychain
• Copy the manifest to Word's sideload directory

Running

bash start.sh        # start server in background
bash stop.sh         # stop server
tail -f server/logs/server.log   # follow logs

Project structure

claude-word/
├── addin/               # Office.js taskpane (HTML/CSS/JS)
│   ├── taskpane.html
│   ├── taskpane.css
│   ├── taskpane.js
│   ├── manifest.xml     # Word add-in manifest
│   └── assets/          # icons
├── server/              # Python FastAPI server
│   ├── main.py          # API endpoints (/init, /ask, /ask-stream, /health)
│   ├── document.py      # Document parsing and context building
│   ├── session.py       # In-memory session store
│   ├── app_launcher.py  # macOS menu bar app (for distribution)
│   └── requirements.txt
├── scripts/
│   ├── setup.sh         # Developer one-time setup
│   └── build-app.sh     # Build standalone .app for distribution
├── start.sh             # Start server (background)
└── stop.sh              # Stop server

API

Endpoint	Method	Description
/health	GET	Server health check
/init	POST	Load document, extract sections, generate summary if needed
/ask	POST	Ask Claude (non-streaming)
/ask-stream	POST	Ask Claude (streaming SSE)

Building the distributable .app

bash scripts/build-app.sh

Output: dist/Claude Word Assistant.app

To publish a release:

cd dist
zip -r "Claude Word Assistant.zip" "Claude Word Assistant.app"
# Upload the .zip to a GitHub Release

Configuration

Copy server/.env.example to server/.env to override defaults:

PORT=5000
CLAUDE_CLI_PATH=/opt/homebrew/bin/claude
LOG_LEVEL=INFO
CLAUDE_TIMEOUT_SECONDS=120

Phase roadmap

• Phase 1 — Selected text → Claude → sidebar response
• Phase 2 — Full document loading, section navigation, streaming
• Phase 3 — Direct document rewriting via Claude