presentation-creator · diff
git:20260729.681b9a2 to git:20260806.a3a42a1
42 added, 26 removed. Audit A to A.
---
name: presentation-creator
- description: Creates bold, minimal, dark-first presentations with structured narrative arcs, punchy slide copy, high-contrast visual design, and conversational speaker notes. Covers live talks, async/recorded decks, and 10-slide investor pitch decks. Use when creating a presentation, structuring a deck, writing slides, building a pitch deck for investors, or asking "outline a presentation about...", "write slides for...", "design a deck for...", or "turn this doc into a deck". For long-form articles use the external ghostwriter skill with platform blog; for marketing copy outside slides use copywriting; for product UI design systems use ui-design.
+ description: Creates bold, minimal presentations built on a story spine, with punchy slide copy, high-contrast visual design (full-bleed palettes or dark with section accents), and conversational speaker notes. Covers live talks, async/recorded decks, 10-slide investor pitch decks, and decks built as a web app with a route per slide and live demos. Use when creating a presentation, structuring a deck, writing slides, building a pitch deck for investors, fixing a deck that has no narrative, or asking "outline a presentation about...", "write slides for...", "design a deck for...", "turn this doc into a deck", "my talk has no story", or "build this deck as a website". For long-form articles use the external ghostwriter skill with platform blog; for marketing copy outside slides use copywriting; for product UI design systems use ui-design.
---
# Presentation Creator
- Bold, minimal, dark-first slide decks: narrative arc to final QA.
+ Bold, minimal slide decks with a story underneath: spine to final QA.
- - **IS:** slide decks end to end: narrative structure, slide copy, visual design, speaker notes, and investor pitch decks.
+ - **IS:** slide decks end to end: story spine, narrative structure, slide copy, visual design, speaker notes, investor pitch decks, and decks built as a web app.
- **IS NOT:** long-form prose (use the external `ghostwriter` skill with platform `blog`), marketing copy outside slides (use `copywriting`), or general visual systems for product UI (use `ui-design`).
## Workflow
Track this checklist:
```text
Presentation progress:
- - [ ] Step 1: Gather context (audience, setting, format: live / async / pitch)
- - [ ] Step 2: Outline narrative arc and slide sequence (references/outline-structure.md)
- - [ ] Step 3: Write slide copy (references/writing-slides.md; pitch decks: references/pitch-decks.md instead)
- - [ ] Step 4: Design visual layout and composition (references/visual-design.md)
- - [ ] Step 5: Write speaker notes (references/speaker-notes.md); skip for pitch decks
- - [ ] Step 6: QA pass, output the slide-by-slide review table
+ - [ ] Step 1: Gather context (audience, setting, format, output)
+ - [ ] Step 2: Write the story spine and the ending (references/story-structure.md)
+ - [ ] Step 3: Outline the slide sequence (references/outline-structure.md)
+ - [ ] Step 4: Write slide copy (references/writing-slides.md; pitch decks: references/pitch-decks.md instead)
+ - [ ] Step 5: Design visual layout and composition (references/visual-design.md)
+ - [ ] Step 6: Write speaker notes (references/speaker-notes.md); skip for pitch decks
+ - [ ] Step 7: QA pass, output the slide-by-slide review table
```
### Step 1: Gather context
- Establish three things (ask if not provided):
+ Establish four things (ask if not provided):
- **Audience:** internal (shared context, be direct) vs. external (build credibility, define terms)
- **Setting:** live talk, recorded/async, or standalone investor pitch
- **The three messages:** what the audience must remember after the deck
+ - **The output:** a markdown outline to hand to a deck tool, a deck built as a web app, or slides in an existing template. Ask before Step 5, because the visual step is where it starts to matter
Route by format:
- - **Live talk or internal/recorded deck** → Steps 2-6 in order.
- - **Investor pitch deck** (read without a presenter) → read [references/pitch-decks.md](references/pitch-decks.md) first. Its 10-slide framework replaces Step 2's outline, and its async copy rules (denser, standalone headlines, 2-3 bullets per section) replace `writing-slides.md` for Step 3: do not load `writing-slides.md` on this path, its presented-deck copy limits contradict it. Skip Step 5 (no presenter); Steps 4 and 6 still apply.
+ - **Live talk or internal/recorded deck** → Steps 2-7 in order.
+ - **Investor pitch deck** (read without a presenter) → read [references/pitch-decks.md](references/pitch-decks.md) first. Its 10-slide framework replaces Step 3's outline, and its async copy rules (denser, standalone headlines, 2-3 bullets per section) replace `writing-slides.md` for Step 4: do not load `writing-slides.md` on this path, its presented-deck copy limits contradict it. Step 2 still applies, in a compressed form: an investor is an audience too, and the spine is what stops a pitch reading as a feature list. Skip Step 6 (no presenter); Steps 5 and 7 still apply.
- ### Steps 2-5: Build the deck
+ ### Steps 2-6: Build the deck
Read each step's reference when you reach it:
| Step | Reference | Covers |
|------|-----------|--------|
- | 2. Outline | [references/outline-structure.md](references/outline-structure.md) | Narrative flow, 12 slide types, section colors, outline output format |
- | 3. Write | [references/writing-slides.md](references/writing-slides.md), replaced by [references/pitch-decks.md](references/pitch-decks.md) on the pitch path | Headline patterns, body text rules, copy per slide type, before/after examples |
- | 4. Design | [references/visual-design.md](references/visual-design.md) | Typography scale, layout patterns, slide-type → layout mapping, visual elements |
- | 5. Notes | [references/speaker-notes.md](references/speaker-notes.md) | Per-slide note structure, delivery cues, notes by slide type |
+ | 2. Story | [references/story-structure.md](references/story-structure.md) | The spine template, writing the ending first, taking a position, stakes, the unstick move |
+ | 3. Outline | [references/outline-structure.md](references/outline-structure.md) | Narrative flow, 12 slide types, section colors, outline output format |
+ | 4. Write | [references/writing-slides.md](references/writing-slides.md), replaced by [references/pitch-decks.md](references/pitch-decks.md) on the pitch path | Headline patterns, body text rules, copy per slide type, before/after examples |
+ | 5. Design | [references/visual-design.md](references/visual-design.md) | Two colour systems, fluid type scale, layout patterns, slide-type → layout mapping |
+ | 6. Notes | [references/speaker-notes.md](references/speaker-notes.md) | Per-slide note structure, delivery cues, notes by slide type |
- ### Step 6: QA pass (produces evidence)
+ Building the deck as a web app rather than exporting from a deck tool: [references/web-deck.md](references/web-deck.md) covers the route-per-slide structure, navigation, layout primitives, motion, and live demos. Read it at Step 5, after the copy exists, never before Step 3.
+ ### Step 7: QA pass (produces evidence)
+
Review every slide and output a table. This is the deliverable that proves the deck is done, not a "looks good" sign-off:
```markdown
- | # | Slide | 3-sec test | One message | Layout | Section color |
- |---|-------|-----------|-------------|--------|---------------|
- | 1 | Title | pass | pass | full statement | teal |
+ | # | Slide | 3-sec test | One message | Spine beat | Layout | Color |
+ |---|-------|-----------|-------------|------------|--------|-------|
+ | 1 | Title | pass | pass | once upon a time | full statement | teal |
```
- **3-sec test:** parseable in 3 seconds at arm's length? Cut copy on any failure until it passes.
- **One message:** exactly one idea per slide; split slides carrying two.
+ - **Spine beat:** which beat of the Step 2 spine this slide serves. A slide serving none is a fact you found interesting; cut it.
- **Layout:** no more than 2 consecutive slides with the same layout.
- - **Section color:** matches the outline's assigned section; no stray accents.
+ - **Color:** the section accent, or the full-bleed palette, matching what Step 5 assigned.
Deck-level checks below the table:
- - Accent color count equals section count (teal reused for opening/closing)
+ - Every spine beat has at least one slide, and the ending matches the one written first
+ - The deck states a position a reasonable person could disagree with
+ - One colour system throughout: accents per section, or full-bleed palettes, never both
- Recap slide has exactly one line per core section
- Pitch decks only: ≤15 slides, explicit ask slide (amount + use of funds), headlines pass the forwardable test (make sense with zero context)
Fix every flagged row and re-output the table before handing over.
## Core principles
- - **Dark-first, high contrast:** black/zinc-900 backgrounds, white text, section-colored accents
+ - **Story before slides:** the spine decides which slides exist. Write the ending first
+ - **Take a position:** a deck nobody could disagree with has not said anything
- **Headlines do the work:** bold statements, not topic labels:
```
Before: "An Overview of Our Q3 Performance Metrics and Results"
After: "Q3: Revenue Up 40%. Here's How."
```
- **Impact through scale, not weight:** large light type beats small bold type
- - **Section colors create rhythm:** one accent per major section so the audience tracks position
+ - **One colour system, held for the whole deck:** full-bleed palettes where a palette owns the entire slide, or dark with one accent per section. Either creates the rhythm the audience tracks position by
+ - **Demo it live where you can:** a working demo, not a screenshot of one
## Gotchas
+ - **A deck with no opinion:** surveying the landscape feels safe to write and gives the room nothing to hold. If nobody could disagree, there is no talk yet.
- **Paragraphs on slides:** the audience reads instead of listening and the speaker becomes redundant. Fail the 3-second arm's-length test, cut copy until it passes.
- **Accents outside the section system:** section colors are wayfinding; a random mid-section accent reads as a topic change that never happened. One color per major section, teal reused for opening and closing.
+ - **Accent thinking on a full-bleed deck:** adding a highlight colour to a slide whose palette already owns the screen. On that system the slide is the accent; the colour changes at the slide boundary, not inside it.
+ - **Fixed pixel type:** a deck sized for the presenter's laptop is a different deck on the projector and unreadable on the phone it gets forwarded to. Size in `clamp()`.
+ - **A screenshot where a live demo would land:** if the deck is a web app and the thing runs, run it. A screenshot of a working demo is the weaker version of both.
- **Speaker notes as a script:** a verbatim script gets read aloud and sounds flat. Notes are scannable prompts: key point, talk-track bullets, transition line.
- **Same layout on every slide:** uniform layouts flatten rhythm; the audience stops registering new slides. Alternate full-statement, split, and data layouts per visual-design.md.
- - **Skipping the outline:** jumping straight to slides produces a list of facts with no arc, then a rewrite once the missing narrative shows. Lock the three key messages first.
+ - **Skipping the spine:** jumping straight to slides produces a list of facts with no arc, then a rewrite once the missing narrative shows. Spine and ending first, then the outline.
+ - **Building the deck app before the story exists:** the primitives get designed around slide 3 and fight every slide after it.
- **Sparse headlines on pitch decks:** "Traction" tells a skimming investor nothing. Write the complete claim: "1,000+ Customers, $10M ARR". Pitch decks are read, not presented.
- **Presented-deck density on a pitch deck:** a 3-words-per-slide deck forwarded with no presenter is unreadable. Route to pitch-decks.md in Step 1, not after the deck is built.
## Related skills
- Optional external `ghostwriter` where installed: long-form articles and tutorials from the `blog` platform profile; use when the output is prose, not slides
- `copywriting`: landing pages, CTAs, marketing copy outside a deck
- `ui-design`: visual systems for product UI and landing pages; presentation visual rules live in references/visual-design.md instead
+ - Taste Training (blode.co/taste-training): trains the eye these rules encode, across type, copy, craft, interaction, and motion