Gemini

Give Gemini Your Branded Templates, Beyond Generic PDF Generation

Give Gemini Your Branded Templates, beyond generic PDF generation

Since April 2026, Gemini can generate PDFs, DOCX, and XLSX files directly from a prompt, but they are generic, untemplated, off-brand. Carbone bridges the gap: your business team designs the invoice, the contract, the quarterly report in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. Gemini fills in the data. Carbone renders the branded, personalised, production-ready document. One template, thousands of perfectly consistent outputs.

Why Gemini users choose Carbone:

Branded templates instead of generic files. Gemini's native file generation hands you an unstyled document. Carbone lets Gemini render your invoice, your contract, your board pack, with the right logo, the right colours, the right footer, the right legal mentions.
Templates designed in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. No proprietary editor. Your finance team owns the invoice, your legal team owns the contract. Gemini just fills in the data.
100+ output formats. PDF, DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, ODT, ODS, CSV, HTML, Markdown, JPEG, PNG. Real editable Office files, not screenshots embedded in a DOCX wrapper.
Deterministic and predictable at scale. One Carbone template plus one JSON payload produces the exact same document every time, at predictable subscription pricing — not a per-token bill. AI-native file generation is expensive in tokens and produces a different file every run; Carbone does not.
Built for the Gemini CLI. Install the Carbone Skill with gemini skills install and batch hundreds of branded PDFs, DOCX, or XLSX in a single CI script.
Works across the Gemini developer surface. The Gemini CLI, the Gemini API, and Vertex AI agents all call Carbone the same way through the MCP server.
Battle-tested for 7+ years. Carbone powers production document workflows in finance, legal, healthcare, and the public sector.

Install the Carbone Skill Set up the Carbone MCP

Give Gemini Your Branded Templates, beyond generic PDF generation illustration

Gemini document generation workflows: invoices, reports, and contracts

Invoice automation, the right way. Instead of asking Gemini for a generic invoice PDF, point it at your Carbone invoice template (the one your finance team approved) and let it fill in the customer, line items, VAT, and totals. Same Gemini conversation, branded output.
CRM-triggered documents at scale. Make, Zapier, or MindStudio detects a HubSpot deal closed. Gemini drafts the quote with the negotiated terms. Carbone renders it in your branded PPTX or PDF. Email out, archive back to the CRM.
Vertex AI batch generation. Pull 500 customer records from BigQuery, let Gemini reason over each one and produce structured JSON. Carbone renders 500 branded statements, quotes, or rider documents in one batch.
Form-submission to branded document. A Google Forms submission triggers Gemini to draft the response. Carbone renders the branded confirmation letter, certificate, or quote.
Quarterly report and board pack workflow. Gemini reasons over a 200-page data room (its long-context strength). Carbone renders the executive summary in PPTX, the financial appendix in XLSX, and the audit pack in PDF, all from one JSON payload.
Migrate from Conga Composer, PDF Butler, JasperReports, Apache POI, Aspose, Docxtemplater, Jinja, or Handlebars. Gemini translates legacy template syntax into clean Carbone tags.

Browse template examples See all supported formats

Gemini document generation workflows: invoices, reports, and contracts illustration

Gemini to PDF: turn HTML or Markdown into a polished document

Gemini Code Assist and the Gemini CLI are strong HTML and Markdown authors, and Carbone renders both as native template formats. Ask Gemini to draft an investor report, a resume, or a product datasheet in HTML/CSS or Markdown, then hand the result to Carbone: one API call returns a print-ready PDF (or DOCX, ODT) with page breaks, headers, footers, loops, conditions, and your brand styles.

Reach for this pattern when you don't need a pre-existing Office template — one-off documents, marketing collateral, or technical brochures.

See the HTML templates and Markdown templates guides for the syntax and best practices.

Gemini to PDF: turn HTML or Markdown into a polished document illustration

Where Gemini's native file generation falls short

Letting Gemini build the whole file is great for a one-off draft. For production document workflows, three things break, and Carbone fixes each:

✗ Not repeatable. The same prompt yields a different file each run, with layout, fonts, and branding drifting from page to page, so testing, versioning, and automation fall apart.
✓ Carbone renders the same document every time from one template and one JSON payload.

✗ Fragile, locked-down files. AI output can look fine yet refuse to open cleanly, break its own formulas, or flatten tables and text into images you cannot edit.
✓ Carbone fills a real Office template instead of writing the file from scratch, so every result is structurally valid and fully editable.

✗ Expensive at scale. Generating full documents burns tens of thousands of tokens each, and a small edit regenerates large sections.
✓ Carbone uses predictable pricing instead — a fixed document quota, usage-based billing, or a flat rate for unlimited rendering.

Bottom line: Gemini helps you draft the template and the wording; Carbone handles the part that has to be exact — merging your data to produce the same document every time.

Where Gemini's native file generation falls short illustration

Carbone Skill and MCP: render documents from Gemini and the Gemini CLI

The Carbone Skill is the knowledge layer. Installed with gemini skills install, it teaches Gemini the full Carbone templating language: tag syntax, formatters, conditions, loops, :set patterns, HTML and Markdown templates, and best practices. Gemini then writes correct Carbone templates on the first try, and knows how to populate yours.

The Carbone MCP server is the action layer — a document generation MCP for AI agents. Through the Model Context Protocol, Gemini can call Carbone directly to upload templates, render documents, convert formats, and manage your template storage, from inside the chat, from the Gemini CLI, or from a Vertex AI agent.

Use the Skill on its own to design and fix templates. Add the MCP when you want Gemini to render the finished, branded document end-to-end, without leaving the chat.

Learn more about the Carbone Skill Learn more about the Carbone MCP

Carbone Skill and MCP: render documents from Gemini and the Gemini CLI illustration

Document automation at scale

Once your template is ready, plug Carbone into n8n, Make, Zapier, Salesforce, HubSpot, Odoo, or any of our other integrations. Build the template once with Gemini, generate branded documents at scale, automatically.

See all integrations