byjunyoung deck-setup — extracting a presentation template
/fig:deck uses the team template's coordinates, colours, and typography exactly as they are. Where those values come from is this skill. It does not read a remote template on every run — it reads local assets extracted here once.
The premise: never invent a value. Where an observation is ambiguous, leave it empty rather than fill it. An empty slot is read by /fig:deck as "that archetype does not exist", and it picks another. Mix up "not there" with "could not measure" and the deck quietly drifts away from the template.
Prerequisites: always load figma:figma-use and figma:figma-use-slides before calling use_figma. Step 2 (measure) is zero writes — the script only returns a report.
Open with what this produces. After this, /fig:deck builds slides from your own template's archetypes rather than a generic layout. Ten to fifteen minutes with the template to hand, and one thing is asked of you that MCP cannot do — applying the template. The template file itself is never touched. Name each step as it begins.
When to invoke
- Using
/fig:deckfor the first time in a new environment, at a new company - The team template has been revised and the values have moved
- The assets folder is missing, or
/fig:deckhas stopped with "no assets"
When NOT to invoke
- Building the deck itself →
/fig:deck - Extracting design-file conventions →
/fig:setup(a separate thing. This one is for Slides templates only)
Configuration
deck.assets_dir is where the assets go. The default is ./deck-assets; if several projects share one template, move it to ~/.claude/deck-assets.
The assets do not live inside the plugin. Team template screenshots and background images carry company assets — a wordmark, an address — that must not ship in a distribution.
1. Reach the template
The source template file is usually outside MCP's reach. When it is, make a mirror.
- Create an empty Slides file —
create_new_file, editorTypeslides - Ask the user to apply the team template from the Templates panel, and wait. MCP cannot apply it
- Applying it pulls in the sample slides wholesale. Those are the source for the catalog
Confirm it was applied before going on. Text still reading Inter or 'Pick a style' means it has not been.
2. Measure (read-only)
Measure every sample that came in. Read the values; do not eyeball them.
| What | How |
|---|---|
| Canvas | Width and height from a slide's absoluteBoundingBox |
| Margins | Min and max x of each slide's children — the mode is the left/right margin |
| Typography | The distribution of fontSize, fontName, letterSpacing, and lineHeight across every TEXT |
| Colour | The colour distribution across every fills and strokes. getLocalPaintStyles alongside |
| Text styles | getLocalTextStylesAsync — the named styles are the type scale |
| Archetypes | Per slide: name, child composition, title position, content top y |
Use the same criteria as /fig:setup. Where the sample is thin or the values are split, do not fill it in. A value becomes a convention only when it dominates 5 or more samples by more than 90%.
Take the type scale from the named text styles. The measured fontSize distribution has hand-tweaked exceptions mixed in, and a scale built from those is not a scale at all.
3. The archetype catalog
One slide is one archetype. For each, record:
number · name · one line on what it is for
title-position family (top / left title vertically centred / caption / no title)
content top y · column count · column width · column gap
slots (coordinates and size for title, subtitle, body, image, figure)
Count the families and report them. Four title positions and six distinct content-top y values is normal. A template is a menu, not a deck — a list of alternatives made to be chosen from. That count is the evidence the user picks fidelity from in step 3 of /fig:deck.
Where reference images help, screenshot each archetype into template-assets/ named by number. It works without them, but they make the choosing accurate.
4. Write the assets
Create three things in deck.assets_dir. They are local files, so write them without a preview — but say so before overwriting anything already there.
template-spec.md — the human-readable spec.
canvas and grid width · height · margin · column width · column gap
typography family candidates · scale (size, weight, letter-spacing, line-height)
colour name → hex. Only the ones that carry meaning
archetype catalog all of them, in the 3-line form above
selection rules content shape → archetype mapping
template.js — the constants and builders that attach to a build script. Written on the assumption that it is concatenated after _common/scripts/deck-base.js.
const FAMS = ['<team font>', 'Inter']; // in order of preference
const C = { bg: hx('#…'), text: hx('#…'), … };
const T = { title:{size:…,style:'Bold',ls:…,lh:…}, … };
const SW = …, SH = …, MARGIN = …, CELL_W = …, CELL_GAP = …;
// archetype builders — put the observed slot coordinates in as they are. Never invent new ones
function titleSlide({title, subtitle, bgImageHash}) { … }
Builders use newSlide, addText, addRect, addImageRect, and addLine from deck-base.js. Do not write element-creation code again — rules like appendChild ordering are baked into those.
template-assets/ — images that cannot be reproduced with shapes, such as the cover and closing backgrounds. Where a wordmark or a mission statement is baked into the image, use the image itself rather than imitating it with shapes.
5. Verify
Do not stop at writing the spec. Actually build one slide.
- Pick one archetype from the catalog and build a slide with the
template.jsbuilder - Compare coordinates, sizes, and colours against the original sample
- A mismatch means the spec is wrong. Fix the spec, not the slide
Once one is right, build one per family — four families, four more slides. Title position is the family that goes wrong most often.
Report three things at the end.
- How many archetypes went into the catalog, and how many were left empty for want of a measurement
- How many title-position families there are, and how many distinct content-top y values
- Whether the team font exists in this environment — without it
/fig:deckruns on a substitute and the letter-spacing changes