presentation-creator git:20260901.a877ac0A

Immutable. This exact content is served forever at /api/v1/blob/bbc6ef848b531705.

---
name: presentation-creator
description: Creates presentations and slide decks with a story spine, punchy slide copy, high-contrast dark-first visual design, and conversational speaker notes, output as Marp markdown by default, or as a web app with a route per slide and live demos. Covers conference and internal talks, recorded or async decks, and 10-slide investor pitch decks. Use when creating a presentation, structuring a deck, writing slides or speaker notes, 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", "write my speaker notes", or "build this deck as a website". When the user names a .pptx or .potx file, use the external pptx skill for the file and this skill for the story, outline, and copy. For long-form articles use the external ghostwriter skill with platform blog; for marketing copy outside slides use copywriting; for product UI use ui-design.
---

# Presentation Creator

Bold, minimal slide decks with a story underneath: spine to final QA.

- **IS:** slide decks end to end: story spine, slide sequence, slide copy, visual system, speaker notes, investor pitch decks, and decks built as a web app; output as Marp markdown (default), Slidev or reveal.js markdown, or a Next.js deck app.
- **IS NOT:** producing or editing the `.pptx`/`.potx` file itself (external `pptx` skill where installed; hand it the finished outline, copy, and notes from this skill), charts inside a slide (external `dataviz` where installed), long-form prose (external `ghostwriter` with platform `blog`), marketing copy outside slides (`copywriting`), or product UI (`ui-design`).

## Workflow

Track this checklist:

```text
Presentation progress:
- [ ] Step 1: Gather context (audience, setting, venue, three messages, output format)
- [ ] 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 colour, type, and layout (references/visual-design.md)
- [ ] Step 6: Write speaker notes (references/speaker-notes.md); skip for a deck sent without a presenter
- [ ] Step 7: Emit the deck in the chosen format (references/output-formats.md or references/web-deck.md)
- [ ] Step 8: QA pass, output the slide-by-slide review table
```

### Step 1: Gather context

Establish these, asking only for what the brief does not answer:

- **Audience:** internal (shared context, be direct) vs. external (build credibility, define terms).
- **Setting:** live talk, recorded/async, or a pitch deck sent to investors and read without you.
- **Venue:** a dark room or a large hall takes the dark system; a bright meeting room, daylight, or a deck that doubles as a handout takes a light palette. Ask when unknown, because it decides Step 5.
- **The three messages:** what the audience must remember after the deck.
- **Output format:** Marp markdown unless there is a reason otherwise. A web app when the deck should run a live demo or live at a URL. A `.pptx` when the user names the file or a house template, produced by the external `pptx` skill from this skill's outline, copy, and notes. Decide now, not at Step 7: the format sets the type and notes mechanics in Steps 5 and 6.

Route by setting:

- **Live talk, internal, or recorded deck** → Steps 2-8 in order.
- **Investor pitch deck sent to be read** → [references/pitch-decks.md](references/pitch-decks.md) first. Its 10-slide framework replaces Step 3's outline, and its async copy rules replace `writing-slides.md` at Step 4 (do not load both: their density rules contradict). Step 2 still applies in compressed form; the spine is what stops a pitch reading as a feature list. Skip Step 6. The same company pitching live on a demo-day stage is a presented deck: use the standard path with the pitch framework as its outline.

### Steps 2-7: Build the deck

Read each step's reference when you reach it:

| Step | Reference | Covers |
|------|-----------|--------|
| 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 colours, 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 rules, copy per slide type, before/after examples |
| 5. Design | [references/visual-design.md](references/visual-design.md) | Two colour systems, contrast thresholds, fluid and fixed type scales, layout patterns, slide type to layout mapping |
| 6. Notes | [references/speaker-notes.md](references/speaker-notes.md) | Per-slide note structure, delivery cues, notes by slide type |
| 7. Emit | [references/output-formats.md](references/output-formats.md) | Marp syntax and export, Slidev and reveal.js equivalents, the `pptx` handoff, where notes live in each |
| 7. Emit (web) | [references/web-deck.md](references/web-deck.md) | Route-per-slide structure, navigation, layout primitives, motion, live demos |
| Changing this skill | `evals/evals.json` | Behavioural scenarios with assertions, plus should-trigger and near-miss routing prompts. Never loads during a user task |

Read `web-deck.md` only after the copy exists. Primitives designed before the outline get shaped around slide 3 and fight every slide after it.

### Step 8: 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 | Spine beat | Layout | Colour | Contrast |
|---|-------|-----------|-------------|------------|--------|--------|----------|
| 1 | Title | pass | pass | once upon a time | full statement | teal | 12.6:1 |
```

- **3-sec test:** parseable in three seconds at arm's length (Duarte's glance test). Cut copy on any failure until it passes. Pitch decks are read, not glanced: substitute "makes sense forwarded with no context".
- **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:** the layout should change when the slide's job changes. Flag a run of three or more identical layouts and keep it only when the section is deliberately a list.
- **Colour:** the section accent, or the full-bleed palette, matching what Step 5 assigned.
- **Contrast:** the smallest text on the slide against its background. 4.5:1 for body and captions, 3:1 only for text at 24px (18pt) or larger. Record the ratio, not "ok".

Deck-level checks below the table:

- 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
- Speaker notes sit where the output format reads them (Marp and Slidev: an HTML comment at the end of the slide; reveal.js: a `Note:` line; `.pptx`: the notes pane)
- Pitch decks only: 10 slides plus an appendix at most, explicit ask slide (amount and use of funds), headlines pass the forwardable test

Fix every flagged row and re-output the table before handing over.

## Core principles

- **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:** the complete claim, not a topic label. "Q3: revenue up 40%. Here's how." beats "Q3 performance overview".
- **Impact through scale, not weight:** large light type beats small bold type.
- **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 is the rhythm the audience tracks position by.
- **Demo it live where you can:** a working demo on a web deck, not a screenshot of one; a recording where the demo cannot run offline.

## Gotchas

- **Dark deck in a bright room:** the default dark system relies on the room. Under daylight or a weak projector the black background goes grey and white body text washes out. Ask about the venue in Step 1; take the light "paper" palette or a white background when the answer is bright, and test on the projector, not the laptop.
- **Contrast checked at headline size only:** a saturated full-bleed pair that reads at 100px fails at 20px caption size. Check the smallest text on the slide: 4.5:1 for body and captions, 3:1 for 24px-plus text, from the actual hex values. Record the ratio in the QA table.
- **Export "PPTX" from Marp or Slidev and call it done:** both rasterise each slide into an image inside the `.pptx`. Text is not selectable or editable, so the deck the client wanted to edit is a stack of pictures. When editable PowerPoint is the deliverable, route to the `pptx` skill.
- **Notes and directives both live in HTML comments in Marp:** `<!-- _class: lead -->` is a directive, `<!-- Open with the outage story -->` is a presenter note. A note that starts with a `key: value` line silently becomes a directive.
- **Fixed pixel type on a web deck:** 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()`; Marp and `.pptx` decks are fixed canvases and take pt sizes instead.
- **Presented-deck density on a pitch deck sent by email:** a 3-words-per-slide deck forwarded with no presenter is unreadable. Route to `pitch-decks.md` at Step 1, not after the deck is built. The inverse also fails: a 60-word slide on a demo-day stage.
- **Sparse headlines on pitch decks:** "Traction" tells a skimming investor nothing. Write the claim: "1,000+ customers, $10M ARR".
- **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.
- **Speaker notes as a script:** a verbatim script gets read aloud and sounds flat. Notes are prompts: key point, talk-track bullets, transition line.
- **Accents outside the section system:** section colours are wayfinding; a random mid-section accent reads as a topic change that never happened. On a full-bleed deck the slide is the accent; the colour changes at the slide boundary, not inside it.
- **Paragraphs on slides:** the audience reads instead of listening and the speaker becomes redundant. Cut until the 3-second test passes.

## Related skills

- External `pptx` skill (anthropics/skills) where installed: creating, editing, and QA of the `.pptx` file. This skill owns story, outline, copy, and notes; on a visual conflict inside a `.pptx`, this skill's colour system and type hierarchy set direction and the `pptx` skill's font, margin, and notes mechanics win.
- External `dataviz` skill where installed: any chart or metric tile on a slide.
- `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.
- External `ghostwriter` where installed: long-form articles from the `blog` platform profile, when the output is prose, not slides.