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Carbone Document Generation

website·Indexed 34 days ago

https://carbone.io/

A document automation platform for generating PDF, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents. Features include a REST API, template design fundamentals for XLSX and PPTX, and AI integration via Carbone Skill and Carbone MCP server for AI agents like Claude and ChatGPT. Available via Carbone Cloud, On-Premise, Private Cloud, and an open-source Embedded Carbone JS library.

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What's inside Carbone

  1. Overview of Carbone document generation capabilities

    Carbone is a node-based document generation tool that allows developers to create high-quality PDFs and other document types from JavaScript code using templates. It supports more than simple text replacement, enabling the embedding of SVG, PNG, and JPEG images, charts, form fields, barcodes, QRCodes, document metadata, and digital signatures. It is designed for high performance with no page limits on generated documents.

  2. Integrate Carbone with Claude AI

    Carbone integrates with Claude (Claude Code, Claude Desktop, and Claude.ai Projects) to automate the generation of professional documents (PDF, DOCX, XLSX, PPTX) using JSON payloads and pre-designed templates. This integration solves common AI-native file generation issues such as layout drift, fragile file structures, and high token costs by using deterministic template rendering.

  3. Integrate Carbone with AI via Model Context Protocol (MCP)

    The Carbone MCP server allows AI assistants (Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, etc.) to generate and convert documents using natural language.

    Key capabilities include:

    • Generating PDF, DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, HTML, MD, and CSV from templates.
    • Converting Office documents, Markdown, and HTML to PDF.
    • Managing reusable templates with versioning.
    • Batch document generation and multilingual rendering.

  4. Integrate Llama with Carbone for sovereign document generation

    Pairing a self-hosted Llama model (e.g., Llama 3.3, 3.2, or Code Llama) with Carbone On-Premise allows for a fully sovereign document pipeline where data, prompts, and documents remain within a private VPC. This architecture is suitable for regulated industries like finance, healthcare, and defense. Llama handles the data structure and wording, while Carbone merges that data into templates designed in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint to produce structurally valid, editable files in 100+ formats (including PDF, DOCX, XLSX, PPTX).

  5. Use Carbone with NoCode and LowCode tools

    Carbone is a generic document generation solution that integrates with various NoCode and LowCode platforms to automate report creation. Supported integrations include:

    • Zapier
    • Make
    • Bubble
    • Glide
    • Retool
    • Appsmith
    • Automatisch

  6. Generate documents using AI with Carbone

    Carbone allows you to connect AI assistants to design templates and generate industry-grade PDF, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents. The system is deterministic, meaning the same template and data always produce byte-identical output, making it suitable for regulated workflows (finance, legal, healthcare). It supports complex layouts including pagination, repeating headers, multi-column sections, dynamic tables, and conditional content.

  7. Inject advanced visualizations using Apache ECharts

    Carbone embeds Apache ECharts to generate charts as SVG images. This method is compatible with ODT, ODS, ODP, ODG, DOCX, PPTX, XLSX, HTML, and PDF.

    Key Constraints:

    • Chart styling and configuration must be defined entirely within the JSON dataset.
    • External dependencies (maps, JS scripts) are not supported.
    • The generated SVG may have compatibility issues with LibreOffice or certain PDF conversions.

    Supported Versions:

    • v5: Default ECharts version.
    • v5a: Modified version optimized for SVG compatibility with LibreOffice.

  8. Implement conditional logic in templates

    Carbone (v3.0+) provides three methods for adding conditions to templates, each preceded by a logical operator formatter:

    1. Inline conditions: Used for printing specific words or short sentences based on data.
    2. Conditional blocks: Used to show or hide larger sections of the document, including paragraphs, tables, and multiple tags.
    3. Smart conditional blocks: A simplified method for toggling the visibility of a row, table, paragraph, or image.

  9. Integrate Carbone with No-Code and Low-Code platforms

    Carbone provides official integrations and compatibility with various no-code and low-code automation tools to generate PDF, Word, and Excel documents from external data sources. Supported platforms include Glide, Make, n8n, Zapier, Bubble, and Retool.

  10. Use the open-source Embedded Carbone JS library

    The Embedded Carbone JS library is a free, open-source Node.js library that allows developers to embed the Carbone engine directly into their code. It includes the full Community feature set: substitutions, repetitions, enums, nested loops, array operations, conditions, formatters, and full i18n (text, number, currency, date, duration, RTL). It also supports custom JS plugins for authentication, storage, metrics, and formatters.

    Limitations: It does not include Enterprise rendering features (dynamic images/colors/charts, barcodes, HTML rendering, smart conditions/aggregates), the Designer Studio, the Template Manager, or the REST API layer.

  11. Understand Carbone template and data basics

    Carbone generates documents by merging a template file with a JSON data object.

    • Templates: Editable documents created in tools like Microsoft Word, LibreOffice, or OnlyOffice. Supported formats include DOCX, PPTX, ODT, HTML, and MD.
    • JSON Data: The data source coming from your application used to populate the template.
    • Workflow: Carbone takes the template and the JSON data, merges them, and outputs a new document (e.g., converting DOCX to PDF).

  12. Choose a Carbone deployment option

    Carbone is available in four deployment models depending on hosting and API requirements:

    1. Carbone Cloud: A managed REST API hosted in the EU (Paris). No setup required; users send JSON and templates to https://api.carbone.io.
    2. Carbone On-Premise: Self-hosted on your own infrastructure using Docker images (carbone/carbone-ee) or native binaries for Linux, macOS, and Windows.
    3. Carbone Private Cloud: A dedicated single-tenant deployment managed via the AWS Marketplace.
    4. Embedded Carbone JS: An open-source Node.js library for developers who want to integrate Carbone directly into a Node.js application without a separate API server.