Building an Agent for Complex Document Drafting and Editing

This post details the architectural shift from a one-shot sub-agent system to an in-memory agent that iteratively builds and edits Word documents. Key technical contributions include: a proprietary OOXML library for full feature support and active maintenance, an agent that prioritizes legal text while exposing minimal OOXML for markup preservation, an in-memory document representation for iterative editing with optimized tools, a get_diff tool for agent self-review, and a reconciliation step for merging edits from parallel sub-agents. The system now dynamically gathers context and supports advanced multi-step operations on lists, tables, and styles, leading to significant improvements in edit quality and user engagement.