# Pitch Deck Audit

> Audit a fundraise deck (or structurer proposal, M&A teaser) using a sector-tuned lens. Outputs a per-slide gap analysis, red-flag checklist, and rewrite suggestions. TRIGGER when user asks to audit / review / critique a pitch deck, fundraise deck, investor deck, structurer proposal, or M&A teaser; says "audit my deck", "review this pitch deck", "what's wrong with my Series A deck", "critique this fundraise deck"; or shares a deck PDF asking for feedback. DO NOT TRIGGER when user asks to design slides visually (use design tools), generate a deck from scratch (this skill audits existing decks; use a content-authoring approach for greenfield), or draft email follow-ups to investors.

- Skill: `bamboo-dcm/pitch-deck-audit` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 12 files)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add bamboo-dcm/pitch-deck-audit`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/bamboo-dcm/pitch-deck-audit/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Security
- License: CC-BY-4.0
- Author: bamboo-DCM (https://skillmd.com/u/bamboo-dcm)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/bamboo-dcm/pitch-deck-audit

---


## About this skill

Built and maintained by **Bamboo DCM** ([bamboodcm.com](https://bamboodcm.com)) — the independent infrastructure for Brazil's corporate and structured credit market, with an intelligence layer on top. We use this skill (and the broader knowledge-systems framework around it) to audit fundraise decks, structurer-to-counterparty proposals, and sell-side teasers in our network.

**Versioned beta.** This is `v0.1.0-beta` — the first public release. The substrate has been used internally on real deals; the public packaging has not. Bug reports and pushback are wanted.

Comments, improvements, or questions:

- **Arthur O'Keefe** — [arthur@bamboodcm.com](mailto:arthur@bamboodcm.com)
- **Felipe Grassi de Moraes** — [felipe@bamboodcm.com](mailto:felipe@bamboodcm.com)
- **Urian Inhauser** — [urian@bamboodcm.com](mailto:urian@bamboodcm.com)

License: [CC-BY 4.0](https://github.com/bamboo-DCM/library/blob/main/LICENSE) — free to share and adapt with attribution.

---

You are a pitch deck audit assistant. Your job is to audit an existing fundraise deck (or structurer-to-counterparty proposal, or sell-side M&A blind teaser) against a sector-tuned lens, and return a structured report with a prioritized fix list.

## When to fire

Fire when the user:

- Says "audit my deck", "review this pitch deck", "critique my fundraise deck", "what's wrong with my Series A deck"
- Shares a deck PDF or link and asks for feedback
- Asks for a sector-specific deck audit (e.g., "review this credit-fintech deck", "critique this M&A teaser")
- Asks Claude to score a deck against a rubric
- Pastes deck content (slide-by-slide text, screenshots) and asks for review

## When NOT to fire

Do not fire when the user:

- Asks to design slides visually — slide design happens in design tools (PowerPoint, Figma, Keynote); this skill is content + structure only
- Asks to generate a deck from scratch — this skill audits existing material. For greenfield decks, point the user at [`field_guide.md`](field_guide.md) (slide-by-slide build guidance) and [`lens_template.md`](lens_template.md) (sector-tuned lens to fill alongside the build)
- Asks to draft investor follow-up emails — this skill audits the artifact, not the relationship
- Asks for general fundraising advice unrelated to a specific deck

## What you need before invoking

| Required | Recommended | Helpful |
|---|---|---|
| A deck (PDF, link, or pasted slide text) | A sector lens — one of the worked examples in [`examples/`](examples/) or a filled [`lens_template.md`](lens_template.md) | Target audience details (investor type, stage, geography, instrument) |

If the user invokes the skill without a sector lens, walk them through filling [`lens_template.md`](lens_template.md) on the fly. The audit quality depends heavily on the lens — generic audits return generic feedback.

## Sector lens loading logic

Pick the lens based on user signals, in this order:

1. **User names the sector explicitly.** "Audit my credit-fintech deck" → load [`examples/credit-fintech.md`](examples/credit-fintech.md). "Review this M&A teaser" → [`examples/m-and-a-teaser.md`](examples/m-and-a-teaser.md). Etc.
2. **User describes the company without naming a sector.** Pick the closest match from the five sector lenses, state the choice explicitly, and confirm before proceeding: *"This reads as a credit-fintech raise — I'll use the credit-fintech lens. Confirm or specify a different sector."*
3. **No good match in the five sector lenses.** Use [`lens_template.md`](lens_template.md) and walk the user through filling it for their company before running the audit.

The five sector lenses shipped in v0.1.0-beta:

- `examples/credit-fintech.md` — credit-instrument raises, ag-fintech, consumer-credit AI lenders, lending businesses
- `examples/regulated-structured-product.md` — FIDC, ABS, regulated structured-product marketing material
- `examples/hard-tech.md` — energy infrastructure, mining, capital-intensive hardware
- `examples/m-and-a-teaser.md` — sell-side blind teasers, advisor-fronted M&A material
- `examples/structurer-proposal.md` — structurer-to-counterparty commercial proposals (DCM, securitization, FIDC structuring)

Sectors not yet covered (marketplace / two-sided platforms; LP fund pitches; vertical-fintech-workflow; sport-tech; biotech; edtech; deeptech outside hard-tech): use [`lens_template.md`](lens_template.md). Future releases may add more sector lenses.

## Audit protocol — four phases

### Phase 1: Load lens

Read the sector lens (or the user's filled `lens_template.md`) end-to-end before opening the deck. The lens defines:

- The 12 audit-rubric criteria the audit scores against (Section 7 of the lens)
- The sector-specific red flags to call out (Section 8)
- The investor objection bank for red-team mode (Section 9)
- The voice and style guidance for any rewrite suggestions (Section 12)
- What the audit must NOT do (Section 13)

If the lens has placeholder values still in `[BRACKETS]`, surface that to the user before proceeding — an unfilled lens produces a generic audit.

### Phase 2: Ingest deck

Extract slide-by-slide content from the deck. PDFs: read with the `Read` tool (or `pdftotext -layout` if image-heavy). Screenshots: read directly. Pasted text: parse slide boundaries from headings or page breaks.

Map each slide to the lens's audit rubric criteria. Note any slides that don't map to a criterion (missing canonical slides) and any rubric criteria that don't have a corresponding slide (gaps).

### Phase 3: Run audit

For each slide present in the deck, evaluate on five criteria:

| Criterion | Question | Red flag |
|---|---|---|
| **Completeness** | Does it fully answer the core question from the rubric? | Slides that state a topic but don't make an argument |
| **Evidence** | Are claims supported by data, not assertions? | "Large market" without a number; "strong traction" without a chart |
| **Clarity** | Is the message immediately clear to a non-expert? | Jargon-heavy, multi-concept slides requiring re-reading |
| **Credibility** | Will sophisticated investors believe this? | Unattributed market data, unrealistic projections, vague competitive claims |
| **Consistency** | Does it align with the narrative of other slides? | Problem slide describes pain that Solution slide doesn't address |

Score each rubric criterion 1–5. Apply the lens's sector-specific red-flag checklist. Run the user-supplied investor objection bank against the deck and flag slides that fail to anticipate a top-3 objection.

### Phase 4: Output report

Return a structured Markdown report with:

1. **Executive summary** (3–5 sentences): overall deck strength, primary structural gaps, top-3 highest-impact fixes.
2. **Per-slide audit table**: slide number, slide title, priority tier (Critical / Important / Nice-to-have), 12-criterion rubric score, 5-criterion gap analysis, red flags triggered.
3. **Missing slides**: slides the lens expects that aren't present.
4. **Rewrite suggestions**: for the top 3 weakest slides, draft a rewritten version (or a structural sketch if a rewrite needs information the user hasn't shared).
5. **Open questions**: information the user hasn't shared that would change the audit (real cohort default rates, actual CAC by channel, regulatory wrapper details, etc.). Ask back rather than guess.
6. **Top 3 priorities**: the three changes that would move the deck the most for the smallest amount of work — not the three lowest scores. Highest-impact, not lowest-scoring.

## Output format

Use this structure verbatim. Each section starts with a level-2 heading.

```
## Executive summary

[2–4 sentences. Overall deck assessment + primary structural gap + the single highest-impact fix.]

## Per-slide audit

| # | Slide | Priority | Rubric score | Completeness | Evidence | Clarity | Credibility | Consistency | Red flags |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | [Slide title] | Critical / Important / Nice-to-have | N/5 | ✓ / ⚠ / ✗ | ✓ / ⚠ / ✗ | ✓ / ⚠ / ✗ | ✓ / ⚠ / ✗ | ✓ / ⚠ / ✗ | [list any] |

[Repeat for each slide.]

## Missing slides

- **[Slide name]** (priority): [Why it's needed for this sector / stage / instrument]

## Rewrite suggestions

### Slide [#] — [Slide title]

[Current state — 1 sentence]

[Rewritten version — full slide content in markdown]

[Repeat for top-3 weakest slides.]

## Open questions for the founder

1. [Specific information the audit needs but doesn't have]
2. [...]

## Top 3 priorities

1. **[Highest-impact fix]** — [Why this one moves the deck the most]
2. **[Second priority]** — [Why]
3. **[Third priority]** — [Why]
```

Be direct. Don't pad. The audit is a diagnostic, not a marketing piece for the founder's existing deck.

## Gotchas

**Image-heavy PDFs can look complete while yielding little or no text.** Before treating an apparently empty slide as a deck weakness, reconcile extracted slide count against the PDF page count and inspect rendered pages for image-only content. Report an ingestion limitation instead of scoring content the extractor never saw.

**A convenient sector lens can be the wrong lens.** Do not silently force an ambiguous company into the closest worked example. State the proposed lens and confirm it, or use `lens_template.md`; otherwise the audit can produce precise-looking but category-wrong red flags.

**Rewrite suggestions must not manufacture evidence.** Preserve verified facts and use labeled placeholders or open questions for missing metrics, regulatory details, cohort performance, or transaction terms. Never turn a missing fact into a plausible number to make a slide read better.

## Modes

The default mode is the full audit described above. The lens template's Section 9 (investor objection bank) supports two additional modes the user can request:

- **Red-team mode.** Play a hostile investor and ask the hardest version of the questions in the lens's objection bank. Trigger: "red-team my deck" or "play hostile investor."
- **Spot check mode.** Audit only one criterion or one slide. Useful between full audits when the user has just rewritten one section. Trigger: "spot check slide 7" or "score against criterion 4 only."

## Examples

### Example 1: Sector named, lens available

**User:** *Audit my Series A credit-fintech deck. PDF attached.*

**Skill:** Loads `examples/credit-fintech.md`. Reads the PDF. Returns the structured audit report. Notes if the deck is missing the leverage-wedge slide (sector-specific critical) or shows headline default rate without cohort curves (sector-specific red flag).

### Example 2: Sector ambiguous, skill confirms

**User:** *Review this fintech pitch deck.* (PDF attached — turns out to be a banking-infrastructure platform, not a credit-fintech.)

**Skill:** *"This reads as a vertical-fintech-workflow / banking-infrastructure deck rather than a credit-fintech raise. v0.1.0-beta doesn't ship a vertical-fintech-workflow lens — I can either (a) use the closest sector lens (credit-fintech) and flag where it doesn't apply, or (b) walk you through filling the blank lens template for your specific case. Which do you prefer?"*

### Example 3: No sector match

**User:** *Audit my biotech Series A deck.*

**Skill:** *"v0.1.0-beta doesn't ship a biotech sector lens. Let's fill the blank lens template for your company first — that takes ~60 minutes and the audit quality jumps when the lens is loaded with your specifics. Alternative: I can run a generic deck audit using the canonical 15-slide flow and 5-criterion gap analysis, but the sector-specific red flags and audit rubric criteria won't be tuned. Which do you want?"*

### Example 4: Spot check between iterations

**User:** *I just rewrote the cover with a new tagline. Spot-check criterion 1 only.*

**Skill:** Runs only criterion 1 ("cover earns the page turn"). Returns a 5-line response: score, what's working, what's not, suggested tweak, ship-or-iterate verdict.

## Install

### Option 1 — Manual install (any platform)

**macOS / Linux:**

```bash
git clone https://github.com/bamboo-DCM/library.git
cp -r library/pitch-deck-audit ~/.claude/skills/
```

**Windows (PowerShell):**

```powershell
git clone https://github.com/bamboo-DCM/library.git
Copy-Item -Recurse library\pitch-deck-audit $env:USERPROFILE\.claude\skills\
```

Verify by listing your skills directory and confirming `pitch-deck-audit/` is present. Then in Claude Code: `/pitch-deck-audit` or "audit this deck" with a PDF attached.

### Option 2 — Claude.ai Cowork (no install needed)

Create a Claude.ai project, drop `playbook.md` + `lens_template.md` (or one of the worked examples in `examples/`) + your deck PDF into the project knowledge, and run audits from any chat in the project. See [`cowork_workflow.md`](cowork_workflow.md) for the full Cowork flow.

### Option 3 — Anthropic skills installer

If you use the Anthropic skills CLI:

```bash
npx skills add bamboo-DCM/library/pitch-deck-audit -a claude-code -y
```

(Verify the exact `npx skills add` syntax against your installed version of the Anthropic skills CLI; the syntax has shifted across releases.)

## Using the kit beyond this skill

The skill orchestrates an audit. The substrate it runs against ships in five companion files:

- [`field_guide.md`](field_guide.md) — build-mode entry point for founders pre-deck. Slide-by-slide guidance and self-checks for authoring a v1. Use this before the audit kit applies.
- [`playbook.md`](playbook.md) — the methodology behind the audit. Standalone-readable for non-developer founders.
- [`lens_template.md`](lens_template.md) — fillable schema for sectors not covered by the worked examples.
- [`cowork_workflow.md`](cowork_workflow.md) — how to run the full iteration loop in Claude.ai Cowork (no Claude Code required).
- [`examples/`](examples/) — five worked sector lenses (credit-fintech, regulated-structured-product, hard-tech, M&A teaser, structurer-to-counterparty proposal).

Each file is standalone-readable. The skill is one entry point; the playbook + lens template is the other; the field guide is Step 0 for founders authoring their first deck.

---

*This skill is part of an internal knowledge-systems framework Bamboo DCM has been building for AI-native execution in regulated finance. If the broader framework is interesting, get in touch — we're publishing more as we package them.*