How to summarize what changed between two documents Leave feedback

Most comparison questions do not want a document back. “Did the price change?”, “What’s different in this draft?”, “Anything I should worry about?” — these want an answer. analyze_changes is built for exactly that: it detects the same differences as compare but never renders a result file.

Note

The commands and config snippets on this page are for the .NET build of the server — the only platform available today. Installation and client setup: MCP server for .NET. Other platforms will expose the same tools with their own launch command; everything else on this page applies unchanged.

What changed between proposal-draft.docx and proposal-final.docx? Keep it short.

The agent calls analyze_changes with the two file names. It gets <N> change(s) detected plus a JSON array — every change with its type, page, component, the changed fragment, and the surrounding text — and turns that into prose.

Rendering a marked-up document is the expensive half of a comparison: the engine has to lay out and write a new file. Skipping it means:

• Faster answers — no file written, nothing to open.
• No output clutter — twenty questions do not leave twenty _compared files in your folder.
• Less metered consumption under metered licensing.

Ask for the file when you actually need the file.

Because the agent holds the change list as data, it can filter it without touching the documents again:

Only the deletions, please. Ignore formatting — show me changes that alter meaning. Group the changes by page. Did any number change?

The last one is worth knowing: a style change and a substantive edit look identical in a rendered redline but are different entries in the array, so the agent can separate “this became bold” from “this became 45 days”.

No changes detected is a real, useful result — it confirms two files are identical in content even when their bytes differ (re-saved, re-exported, different producer). That is a question diff cannot answer for a DOCX or a PDF.

Good — now give me the marked-up copy of the ones about pricing.

The agent switches to compare and saves the rendered document. Summarize first, render on demand: that is the pattern that keeps a comparison workflow fast.