SKILL.md

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:

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 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	The spine template, writing the ending first, taking a position, stakes, the unstick move
3. Outline	references/outline-structure.md	Narrative flow, 12 slide types, section colours, outline output format
4. Write	references/writing-slides.md, replaced by 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	Two colour systems, contrast thresholds, fluid and fixed type scales, layout patterns, slide type to layout mapping
6. Notes	references/speaker-notes.md	Per-slide note structure, delivery cues, notes by slide type
7. Emit	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	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:

| # | 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:  is a directive,  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.