Presentations

Presentations — Stunning, On-Brand Decks (PDF + PPTX)

Two first-class pipelines, one decision. Design-led Markdown decks (Marp/Slidev) for a deck that flipa and exports clean to PDF and PPTX, or native editable PowerPoint via python-pptx when the user must hand off a .pptx people will edit in PowerPoint/Keynote/Google Slides. The deck owns structure, visual system, and export. The words are marketing's job; the visual tokens are design's. This skill orchestrates all three into a finished deck.

Also out of scope: a web-native, scroll/animation-heavy landing page (that is ../design/SKILL.md + ../nextjs/SKILL.md); a video / motion explainer as the deliverable — this skill uses motion only as restrained slide transitions and builds, never as the medium; and the live financial model behind an investor deck — this skill renders the slides and cites the model as the source of truth.

Brand grounding (gate — clears before the first headline)

Never produce deck copy or a deck narrative without a complete brand study. A deck is the brand on stage: generic slides read as "another AI deck" the moment they hit the projector, and the only cure is grounding every headline, claim, and tone choice in a real, persisted brand profile. This is the same gate marketing and design enforce — decks share the study, they do not fork it.

1. Locate the brand study. Read the project's root CLAUDE.md for a ## Brand & voice section linking into 02-DOCS/wiki/brand/ (the harness Karpathy-wiki convention: compiled brand articles under 02-DOCS/wiki/brand/, raw inputs the user pastes under 02-DOCS/raw/brand/). No CLAUDE.md, no link, or a link that points nowhere = ABSENT.
2. Check completeness against the checklist in references/brand-grounding.md — it extends the shared brand checklist with deck-specific dimensions: deck purpose, audience & setting, length, presenter-vs-leave-behind, and must-include slides. Any empty dimension = INCOMPLETE.
3. If ABSENT or INCOMPLETE, STOP and interview the user — one focused batch at a time, never all questions at once. Voice samples are mandatory; never fabricate a voice. Then persist: write/update the brand study under 02-DOCS/wiki/brand/ (raw inputs verbatim under 02-DOCS/raw/brand/), and add/update the ## Brand & voice link in root CLAUDE.md. Exact format → references/brand-grounding.md.
4. Only once the study is complete, proceed — and cite which articles drove the deck (e.g. "narrative grounded in 02-DOCS/wiki/brand/value-proposition.md, voice in voice.md").

Single exception: if the user explicitly says "skip it, rough draft", you may produce a clearly-labelled DRAFT (ungrounded — not brand-checked) and still recommend running the gate before it ships.

Design the message before the pixels

A deck is a communication artifact, so the design that matters most is the message design. Everything below descends from audience-centered design — every choice serves the audience's understanding, not the presenter's comfort.

Plan the message (six questions). Lock these before storyboarding: (1) who specifically is the audience and what do they already know; (2) the ONE main message they remember a week later; (3) the 3–5 supporting points that carry it; (4) the evidence proving each; (5) the single call-to-action; (6) what is essential vs. expandable under time pressure. These feed the deck arc directly: message = thesis, points = beats, CTA = closing ask (→ references/storytelling-and-decks.md).

Assertion-evidence is the slide unit. Each slide = one assertion (a complete claim, written as the title) + the visual evidence that proves it — never a topic label over a bullet list. "User engagement rose 43% after the redesign" + a chart, not "Engagement" + three bullets. The body proves the headline; it never repeats it.

One concept per slide. Working memory is small and the audience is also listening to you. If a slide needs two breaths to explain, it's two slides. Reveal sequential parts progressively — build order is the explanation — rather than dumping everything at once.

Spoken vs. shown — never both. The slide and your mouth are two channels; redundancy wastes both. Show the assertion, the visual, the number, the next step; say the elaboration, the context, the interpretation, the story. Reading slides verbatim is the fastest way to lose a room.

Full frameworks — the planning questions, the spoken/shown table, the 1–5 evaluation rubric (audience-centered / visual clarity / cognitive load / accessibility), the implementation checklist, and the communication anti-patterns — live in references/slide-design.md. Score any draft against the rubric (≥ 4 on each axis) before shipping.

Which pipeline? (decide before building)

Pick once, up front — switching mid-build is expensive.

Default to the Markdown pipeline for anything where "stunning" matters and the user is fine getting a PDF (+ image-based PPTX). Choose python-pptx the moment the user says "I need to edit it in PowerPoint", "the client edits the slides", "live charts", or "corporate template .potx". When unsure, ask one question: "After I hand it over, will someone edit the slides in PowerPoint/Keynote, or is a polished PDF enough?" You can also build in Markdown and additionally export a --pptx for handoff — just warn that Marp/Slidev PPTX slides are images, not editable text (a key gotcha, see exports).

Deep recipes for each → references/markdown-decks.md and references/pptx-python.md.

Workflow

1. Ground in the brand study (gate above). Pull voice, positioning, proof, audience.
2. Pick the deck arc for the purpose (pitch / sales / product / keynote / investor / QBR) from references/storytelling-and-decks.md. Lock the one-sentence thesis the whole deck proves.
3. Write the slide-by-slide skeleton — one assertion headline per slide + the proof it carries. This is a marketing collaboration: headlines are copy. Get the skeleton approved before designing pixels.
4. Pick the pipeline (table above).
5. Build the theme from design tokens — map the project's OKLCH palette, type scale, and spacing into a Marp/Slidev CSS theme or a python-pptx theme. (→ references/slide-design.md, references/markdown-decks.md, references/pptx-python.md)
6. Lay out the slides against the visual system: grid, type scale for projection, data-viz best practices, imagery, contrast, restrained motion. (→ references/slide-design.md)
7. Produce presenter + leave-behind variants if needed: presenter version is sparse (headline + visual, talk track in notes); leave-behind is self-explanatory (more on-slide text, appendix). (→ references/storytelling-and-decks.md)
8. Export to PDF (vector, fonts embedded, 16:9) and/or editable PPTX; handle font-embedding and file-size gotchas. (→ references/markdown-decks.md, references/pptx-python.md)
9. Verify with scripts/verify.sh (lint deck sources, dry export, import check) and the QA gate below.
10. Record deck conventions in 02-DOCS/wiki/stack/presentations.md (Project grounding, below).

Worked example — storyboard → theme → export (Markdown pipeline)

One end-to-end pass, brand study already complete. Read this once and you rarely need to round-trip the references for a standard Markdown deck.

1. Storyboard the spine (assertion headlines only — read top-to-bottom, they ARE the pitch; → references/storytelling-and-decks.md). Thesis: "Onboarding v2 is why we can raise now."

1 Onboarding v2 cut churn 40%          (title)
2 One in three users never finished setup   (problem — make it ache)
3 We rebuilt the first run as one screen      (solution, one visual)
4 Activation rose 28pts in six weeks          (proof — chart, one series)
5 TAM is $12B, growing 24%/yr                 (market, stated assumptions)
6 The ask: $2M to make this the default path  (CTA — one ask)

2. Theme from design tokens. Pull OKLCH palette + type scale from 02-DOCS/wiki/stack/design.md into a Marp CSS theme (full theme → references/markdown-decks.md). The load-bearing move is mapping tokens to variables once, never hand-picking hex per slide:

/* @theme brand — generated from 02-DOCS/wiki/stack/design.md */
@import url('https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Fraunces:wght@700&family=Inter:wght@400;600&display=swap');
:root { --brand: oklch(0.62 0.19 264); --ink: oklch(0.18 0.03 264);
        --surface: oklch(0.98 0.005 264); --accent: oklch(0.74 0.17 52); }
section { background: var(--surface); color: var(--ink); font-family: Inter, sans-serif; font-size: 26px; }
h1 { font-family: Fraunces, serif; font-size: 44px; } strong { color: var(--accent); }

Write the spine into deck.md with marp: true, theme: brand, size: 16:9, talk track in <!-- notes -->.

3. Export to PDF + PPTX and verify fonts embed (gotchas → references/markdown-decks.md):

npx @marp-team/marp-cli@latest deck.md --theme ./theme.css --pdf --pdf-outlines --pdf-notes
npx @marp-team/marp-cli@latest deck.md --theme ./theme.css --pptx     # image-per-slide; NOT editable text
pdffonts deck.pdf            # every font must read 'emb yes'
./scripts/verify.sh          # lint + dry export + QA checklist

If the client will edit the slides, this is the wrong pipeline — rebuild with python-pptx (→ references/pptx-python.md), whose build_deck.py emits the same six slides as native editable shapes/charts.

Tooling & current versions (verified 2026-06)

• Marp — @marp-team/marp-cli. Run pinned: npx @marp-team/marp-cli@latest deck.md --pdf. Exports HTML / PDF / PPTX / PNG / JPEG. Needs a Chromium-family browser (Chrome/Edge) or Firefox for PDF/PPTX/image export (v4 added Firefox via WebDriver BiDi as a fallback; Chrome/Edge are preferred and give the most faithful PDF). --pptx is image-per-slide; --pptx-editable is experimental and needs LibreOffice (soffice). --notes / a .txt output exports speaker notes. Node 18+. (→ references/markdown-decks.md)
• Slidev — @slidev/cli (Vue-based). Scaffold npm init slidev@latest; dev slidev; export slidev export (PDF default; --format pptx|png). Export needs playwright-chromium installed in the project (npx playwright install chromium or npm i -D playwright-chromium). PPTX is image-per-slide; notes carry over per slide. Best for code-heavy / developer talks (live code, Monaco, Mermaid, Vue components). (→ references/markdown-decks.md)
• python-pptx — pip install python-pptx (current major 1.x, e.g. 1.0.x). Pure Python, no Office/LibreOffice needed to write .pptx. Creates masters/layouts, text, tables, native editable charts, images, speaker notes. Cannot render to PDF itself — convert via LibreOffice soffice --headless --convert-to pdf or open in Office. (→ references/pptx-python.md)
• decktape / Playwright — fallback HTML→PDF for any web deck (reveal.js, custom HTML) when Marp/Slidev export isn't available. (→ references/markdown-decks.md)

Always pin/verify the version in the target project before generating (marp --version, npx slidev --version, python -c "import pptx; print(pptx.__version__)"). Tooling moves; re-check rather than trusting memory.

Slide copy (with marketing)

The deck's words are conversion copy on a stage. Defer the craft to ../marketing/SKILL.md; this skill enforces the deck-specific shape:

• Benefit-led, climbing feature → benefit → proof, stopping at the rung the audience cares about. Specificity (a number, a mechanism, a receipt) beats adjectives — "2× faster" not "blazing fast".
• Two text densities, chosen deliberately: presenter slides carry a headline + one visual + 0–3 support points, with the argument in the speaker notes / your mouth; leave-behind slides are self-contained because no one is narrating. Never ship a wall-of-text presenter slide.
• Voice from the brand study. Headlines obey the do/don't word lists and tone samples. Ban-list words ("revolutionary", "seamless", "game-changer", "supercharge") are defects.

Visual system for slides (with design)

The deck's pixels are the brand's design system projected at 3 metres. Defer the system to ../design/SKILL.md; this skill enforces the deck-specific constraints (full depth → references/slide-design.md):

• Layout grid built for 16:9: a 12-column grid, generous margins, one focal point per slide, consistent safe-area so nothing clips on a projector.
• Type scale for projection, not laptop reading distance: display/headline/body/caption steps, body ≥ 24pt (≥ 28–32pt for talks), ~6 words/line and ~6 lines/slide as a ceiling, contrast ≥ 4.5:1. Never drop below the legibility floor to cram text — split the slide instead. If it doesn't read at 3 metres, it doesn't ship.
• Color from tokens, allocated for a room: dark themes read better in dark rooms / on big screens, light themes for printed handouts and bright rooms. High contrast always; never rely on color alone to encode meaning.
• Data viz that makes one point: one chart = one takeaway named in the headline; remove gridlines/clutter; label directly; pre-attentive emphasis (one highlighted bar/line) over rainbow palettes; never a 3-D pie. Every number traces to a source — mark gaps [[NEEDS PROOF]], never fabricate one to fill a chart.
• Imagery full-bleed and intentional (with a legibility scrim behind text), not stocky decoration; respect resolution so it doesn't pixelate on a 4K projector.
• Motion with restraint: one transition family, ≤ 300ms, builds that reveal one idea at a time; reduced-motion honored in HTML pipelines. Animation explains sequence/state change, never just fills time.

Anti-patterns

Quick reference

# --- Markdown: Marp (PDF is the hero; PPTX = images) ---
npx @marp-team/marp-cli@latest deck.md --theme ./theme.css --pdf            # vector PDF, fonts embedded
npx @marp-team/marp-cli@latest deck.md --theme ./theme.css --pdf --pdf-outlines --pdf-notes
npx @marp-team/marp-cli@latest deck.md --pptx                               # image-per-slide PPTX
npx @marp-team/marp-cli@latest deck.md --pptx --pptx-editable               # experimental, needs soffice
npx @marp-team/marp-cli@latest deck.md --notes notes.txt                    # speaker notes only

# --- Markdown: Slidev (code-heavy talks) ---
npm init slidev@latest                                                      # scaffold
npx slidev                                                                  # dev server (localhost:3030)
npx playwright install chromium                                             # one-time, for export
npx slidev export                                                           # PDF (default)
npx slidev export --format pptx                                             # image-per-slide PPTX

# --- Native editable PPTX (python-pptx) ---
pip install python-pptx
python build_deck.py                                                        # your generator (see ref)
soffice --headless --convert-to pdf deck.pptx                               # PPTX -> PDF via LibreOffice

# --- Fallback: any HTML deck -> PDF ---
npx decktape reveal http://localhost:8000 deck.pdf

# --- Verify before shipping ---
./scripts/verify.sh            # warn-by-default; lint sources + dry export + import check
./scripts/verify.sh --strict   # gate CI (warnings become failures)

Deck QA gate

Run before claiming done — each line is a defect if unchecked. scripts/verify.sh automates the mechanical subset.

• Brand study located, complete, and cited (which articles grounded the deck).
• One idea per slide; every slide titled with an assertion headline, not a topic label.
• Body text ≥ 24pt (≥ 28–32pt for a talk); ≤ ~6 words/line, ≤ ~6 lines/slide; contrast ≥ 4.5:1.
• Colors / type / spacing come from design tokens, not hand-picked per slide.
• Deck follows a deliberate arc with a single thesis; opens with a hook, closes with the ask/CTA.
• Every number traces to a source; gaps marked [[NEEDS PROOF]], none invented.
• Charts each make one point, named in the headline; no 3-D/rainbow/dual-axis clutter.
• Motion is one restrained family (≤ 300ms); reduced-motion honored (HTML); builds reveal meaning.
• Presenter vs leave-behind variant chosen deliberately; presenter notes hold the talk track.
• 16:9; PDF is vector with fonts embedded; PPTX opens clean in PowerPoint/Keynote/Slides.
• PPTX editability matches the promise (python-pptx if "editable", not flattened Marp/Slidev images).
• File size sane (compressed images, subsetted fonts); ban-list words absent from copy.
• Scored ≥ 4/5 on each axis of the design rubric — audience-centered, visual clarity, cognitive load, accessibility (→ references/slide-design.md, "Diagnostic rubric").

Project grounding (02-DOCS)

In a project with a 02-DOCS/ layer (the harness Karpathy wiki), read 02-DOCS/wiki/stack/presentations.md first and stay consistent with it; create or refresh it when missing or stale, and index it in 02-DOCS/wiki/index.md. It records this project's real choices: the chosen pipeline (Marp / Slidev / python-pptx) and why, the theme file path and how it maps the design tokens, the standard deck arc(s), export commands and the canonical output, the presenter-vs-leave-behind convention, and font-embedding / asset-location notes.

The deck theme is downstream of the design tokens: always reconcile that article with 02-DOCS/wiki/stack/design.md so the deck and the product share one palette and type system.

No 02-DOCS/ layer? Skip silently (optionally suggest harness). Unlike the brand study, deck conventions are recorded, not gated — never block the task on this.