Slide Editing

Slide Editing

Slides are HTML content stored inside the deck JSON. Each slide's content field is a self-contained HTML string rendered at the intrinsic dimensions for its aspect ratio: 16:9 is 960x540, 1:1 is 1080x1080, 9:16 is 540x960, and 4:5 is 864x1080. These canonical dimensions come from the shared aspect-ratio registry; do not assume a fixed 1920x1080 canvas.

Slide HTML Structure

Every slide uses this wrapper:

<div class="fmd-slide" style="padding: 80px 110px; display: flex; flex-direction: column; justify-content: flex-start;">
  <!-- Slide content here -->
</div>

Styling Rules

These are fallback defaults only. When a design system is linked, its hydrated tokens control color, typography, spacing, borders, imagery, and slide defaults; a reference deck controls composition and markup idiom only. The generic Impeccable-inspired quality bar can flag hierarchy, contrast, density, and anti-pattern issues, but it cannot replace the active system.

When no system is linked, generated slides may use these conventions:

Fit and Density

Fit the main content to the native content area, not merely to the outer wrapper. For the default 16:9 canvas, the standard 80px 110px padding leaves 740x380px. Keep titles to two lines, content slides to three short bullets or three compact cards, and two-column slides to two or three short items per column. If the source is denser, split it across slides. Never use zoom, transform: scale(), clipping, or scroll overflow to hide a fit issue; body text must remain at least 16px. Explicitly reduced slide padding is allowed when the content still needs the space.

Updating a Slide

To edit a slide's content:

1. Inspect the current context: call view-screen to get the active deck, slide ID, HTML, and any slides-selection style/edit target. For a focused replacement or translation of currently selected text, if the result includes a matching exact selectedText range and currentSlideId, skip get-deck and go directly to the bounded update-slide edit below. For a targeted persisted read, pass that stable slideId to get-deck so only the target slide is returned; use compact=false when you need its full HTML.

2. Retrieve before generating: when the edit changes facts, brand language, or layout, follow the creative-context skill and query those roles separately. Respect opt-out, pinned packs, and the exact reuse ladder.

3. Modify the content HTML string for the intended slide. Preserve an approved native template or component when it already fits; generate net-new structure only when the relevant corpus is empty.

4. Update the slide with update-slide using deckId, slideId, and ordered edits. When view-screen returns an exact selectedText range, edit immediately: send one literal replace with the selected text as find, expectedMatches: 1, and currentSlideContentHash as baseContentHash; do not load the full deck, use fullContent, or wait for layout-fit. If the text is truncated, ambiguous, contains markup that prevents a literal match, or the edit is structural, use targeted get-deck first, use its contentHash as baseContentHash, then read back. For code-style work, request compact=false and format=true. Use exact replace, insert before/after, replace between markers, or regex replace. All edits are applied in memory under the deck lock; if one required edit fails, nothing is written. Set format=true on update-slide to persist readable Prettier line breaks. Use fullContent only for an intentional full rewrite - do not regenerate a slide to make a small change. Do not write deck rows directly or add raw full-deck writes; use patch-deck for browser/editor changes. Read a write back with get-deck (or a thumbnail's .slide-content textContent), never document.body.innerText: sidebar thumbnails use content-visibility: auto, so innerText is empty for them in a hidden tab, and the canvas only ever shows the selected slide.

5. For browser/editor code, enqueue granular deck operations through patch-deck / DeckContext.tsx instead of replacing the whole deck JSON.

6. For factual edits, compare changed text against the retrieved source and preserve quote, speaker, date, metric, and uncertainty status. Existing HTML or visual similarity is not proof of source fidelity.

Skipping a Slide

Set a slide's skipped: true via a patch-deck patch-slide operation to exclude it from Present/Presenter playback without deleting it — the slide stays in the deck, editor, and exports. Set skipped: false (or omit it) to include it again. The rail's right-click menu on each slide thumbnail offers Cut, Copy, Paste, Delete, New slide, Duplicate slide, and Skip slide as the same operations.

Click-to-reveal animations

Animations are metadata over the final slide HTML, not alternate slide markup. Read the full target slide, keep its existing visual structure, and patch the complete ordered animations list with elementPath values from that exact HTML. Elements omitted from the list remain visible immediately, so labels and headings need no duplicate markup. Do not add hidden duplicates, layout spacers, absolute-positioned copies, transforms, or placeholder content to simulate reveals. When content and reveals change together, send both fields in one patch-deck operation. To remove reveals, send animations: [] with the existing content and verify the persisted slide afterward.

Array order is reveal order, and each entry needs a non-empty id, a 0-based elementIndex, and a type of appear, fade, slide-up, or zoom; the schema rejects the operation otherwise. Nothing checks that ids are unique, but the editor keys its reveal list by id, so a duplicate makes "remove" and "change type" hit every entry sharing it.

elementPath has to come from the exact final HTML because it is positional: every segment is a child index, so inserting or removing a sibling anywhere along the path retargets it. The runtime resolves the path first and falls back to elementIndex only when it fails to resolve, which is why a stale path silently reveals the wrong element instead of erroring. get-deck with compact=true reports each step's order, id, target, and type for verification.

If retrieval produces a new immutable context pack, keep its contextPackId and reuse labels with the deck provenance. Existing slide HTML is not proof of which source version influenced it.

Freeform Canvas Objects

Manual text boxes and other freeform canvas objects are absolutely positioned children of .fmd-slide. Give each one a stable data-slide-object-id:

<div
  class="fmd-text-box"
  data-slide-object-id="slide-object-unique-id"
  style="position: absolute; left: 160px; top: 120px; width: 420px;"
>
  Editable text
</div>

• Preserve data-slide-object-id when updating, moving, resizing, or styling an existing object.
• Mint a new unique object ID when duplicating an object.
• Do not use runtime-only data-builder-id values in saved slide HTML.
• Keep generated flex and grid content in normal flow. Do not silently absolute-position a nested layout child just to make it draggable; create a deliberate freeform object instead.
• Build editable shapes with styled HTML elements such as div. Do not use inline SVG, which the slide sanitizer removes.

Image Placeholders

For visual elements (diagrams, charts, photos), use placeholder divs:

<div class="fmd-img-placeholder" style="width: 100%; height: 300px; border-radius: 12px;">
  Description of the image
</div>

Never try to recreate complex visuals with raw HTML/CSS. Use placeholders and generate proper images via the image generation flow.

Slide Layouts

Common layout patterns:

• Title slide: Single centered heading, justify-content: center
• Section divider: Large single word, centered
• Content: Section label + heading + bullet list
• Two-column: Flex row with gap: 40px, text left, image right
• Table: CSS grid with alternating row backgrounds