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  • Hacker News
  • I suspect that it’s used in headless clip mode to reliably convert file formats back and forth.
    by lennart-rth
  • Imagine the enormous complexity of office file formats if your business is literally building coding models/agents and still you choose to bundle LibreOffice.
    by monneyboi
  • Someone may need to explain to me what is wrong with this sorry. Is it because it bloats the app with functionality that some users will never use? I feel like that is fairly usual for productivity/business apps generally.
    by alex-moon
  • Actually, people do use and require the functionality, which is the point. The title as posted might be incorrect.
    by OutOfHere
  • I don't see anything wrong with it, I just think it's interesting.
    by simonw
  • First Claude installed 10GB VM [0] without asking, but OpenAI ships LibreOffice. What's next? Somebody ship their monorepo verbatim?

    Honestly, not sure it's worth having those app on your localhost at all. I ended up uninstalling all frontier labs bloated apps and start using Google AI Mode + Antigravity CLI / Claude Code sometimes.

    [0] https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/22543

    by paaloeye
  • I already have a copy of LibreOffice on my mac. It weights around 3GB. That extra copy is not appreciated
    by newbie001
  • Now someone please use ChatGPT/Codex or Claude Code to rewrite the entire LibreOffice source into a single Rust binary already! Just like Jarred Sumner did for Bun [1] or Carmine Paolino did for Fastpotify [2] - granted there are some rough edges for sure, but the slim diet trimmed down and performance gains were wrothy.

    [1] https://bun.com/blog/bun-in-rust [2] https://fastpotify.rocks/

    by devy
  • > rewrite the entire LibreOffice source into a single Rust binary already!

    Why?

    by what
  • Curiously, I didn't find any reference in the Open source licences section of the codex app.

    Is this a MPL 2.0 violation?

    by vb-8448
  • I think that depends on if they distribute it with the install package, or if they download it once installed.
    by ars
  • Copyright violation is the last thing one could accuse ChatGPT of.
    by thesdev
  • Despite the title, I'm not sure it's actually bundled. Some of the skills plugins will download it on the first run. So it depends where they are grabbing it from rather than the presence of the binary on the system, but I haven't checked that deep into where they actually grab it.
    by zamadatix
  • There is a serious threat to Microsoft here, if everyone starts using AI for generating and updating Office docs. At some point Office will become just a viewer.
    by petilon
  • Haven't used MicrosoftOffice in the past 7 years.
    by jags-v
  • If you don't have to edit files or you are not supposed to, they should send you a PDF, unless it's an Excel. Excel is a much better viewer for itself because of many reasons (explore the formula, sort, filter) including that usually its sheets are not built to fit a particular page format.
    by pmontra
  • Likewise with PDF editing via AI. Way nicer than having to pay Adobe or some other shady software vendor for PDF editing ability.
    by Schlagbohrer
  • I have not created or read any Word document for a very long time. I only create PowerPoint presentations a few times a year for work, which could be easily replaced with PowerPoint online or Google Slides or even just some markdown files.

    But I have a license for the entire office 365 including Copilot premium.

    Guess why?

    by fg137
  • Don't worry, they are ahead of this.

    Satya said some time ago that they expect soon to have more agents using Microsoft software than humans, and are working on transitioning their focus from serving humans to serving agents.

    https://www.news18.com/business/satya-nadella-announces-micr...

    by dist-epoch
  • im stoked for that outcome, standard document tooling should not live behind subscription models anymore. i dont care that microsoft spent zillions bankrolling education systems and companies to fall into this cultural lock in over the decades

    whether they like it or not spreadsheets word docs etc are just ubiquitous parts of existing in society at this point you're gonna need to reach for these tools eventually just to apply for jobs or do homework

    by trueno
  • Is that what it is using to render and manipulate MS Office documents? That'd explain the poor rendering of some of my files. Bundling all of LibreOffice seems like a pretty huge dependency.
    by pseudosavant
  • Yes. If you have word you can instruct to use word via com or AppleScript.
    by tiahura
  • Just the headless version looks to be bundled. The title as posted might be incorrect.
    by OutOfHere
  • > Bundling all of LibreOffice seems like a pretty huge dependency

    What's the alternative library you see?

    by nomel
  • For a docker image of mine I was bundling the full version of LibreOffice as well but I managed to get some space savings by bundling just the no-gui version.
    by JLO64
  • I have a skill that instructs ChatGPT/Codex to verify the rendering using the Mac versions of Microsoft Office. Even without registering, you still can open files read-only, which is enough. Apparently Office refuses to open some Open Office XML documents that LibreOffice is fine with, so that's another reason to use this. After a few times, Codex ended up storing some memories to stop producing broken files in the first place.

    I generated the skill originally for ChatGPT 5.5, so some of these may not strictly be necessary anymore with later models. But posting here in case others find it useful: https://gist.github.com/telotortium/844386f762c4b3bab49999ba...

    by telotortium
  • What's ironic about this is, afaik there's no programmatic way to get a screenshot of a PowerPoint on windows other than opening up PowerPoint and screenshotting it. I only discovered this when I first tried out Anthropics official PowerPoint skill when it came out this winter.

    If anything happens from this, I hope it forces Microsoft to address some of its long standing hostile to power users issues so they can stay relevant in the world of AI tooling.

    by bs7280
  • The new app is an unbelievable mess. Settings are senselessly organized, too. The whole thing has this aesthetic slickness and then underneath it's like the people who make it have never even used it.

    It's not surprising that it's pulled in absolutely massive dependencies, although I'm not sure it's the wrong call on some operating systems. LibreOffice is pretty tried and true.

    by isityettime
  • > The new app is an unbelievable mess.

    How so? On Windows, I like it (version 26.825.51511).

    Works fast (like modern Claude Code desktop, their old versions were bad), has pretty okay UI (could have an option for wider main text display, like ZCode added), allows you to change the fonts and shells and some of the layout stuff.

    I mean currently I have Paseo hooked up to OpenCode that runs the actual models and often that works a bit better for me, but as a standalone desktop offering, the ChatGPT app has been okay in my experience. I can kinda see why ZCode copied them a bunch (though ZCode also lets you run 3rd party models, which is actually preferable to me).

    I do like the idea that Claude Code desktop had in the earlier versions, 3 tabs - chat, work, code, except they kinda went in the direction of merging chat and work which was very ehhhh. The ChatGPT app doesn't even have a proper split between chat and work/code.

    by KronisLV
  • Probably vibe coded right?
    by Schlagbohrer