The paper-docx project announced a fork of the popular python-docx library that keeps the same docx import name but adds guarded APIs that reject unsupported edits rather than silently corrupting files. Installation is a single pip command – python -m pip install paper-docx – and the package replaces python-docx in the environment.
Drop‑in replacement
Both paper-docx and the original python-docx expose a docx package, but you must uninstall python-docx first (python -m pip uninstall -y python-docx paper-docx) to avoid conflicts. Reverting is equally simple: uninstall paper-docx and reinstall python-docx. This design lets existing code import docx unchanged while gaining the safety checks.
Safe redlining workflow
The fork ships a compare helper that writes differences between two .docx files as tracked changes. A minimal example creates two documents, calls compare("original.docx", "revised.docx", author="Reviewer"), and saves a redline file. The API reports revision_count (e.g., 2) and refuses any change it cannot represent safely, preventing silent corruption that can arise with the upstream library.
Licensing and contribution
paper-docx is released under the MIT license, inheriting the terms from python-docx. The repository includes a CONTRIBUTING.md and encourages pull requests. No pricing information is provided – the tool is free to use, and the page does not list any usage limits or commercial tiers.
When to try it
If your startup builds LLM‑driven document pipelines and you need deterministic editing of Word files, swap in paper-docx in a dedicated virtual environment and run your existing python-docx code to catch unsafe operations early. Watch the repo for future releases that may add more guarded APIs.
