Craft Client PPTX

Create presentations that are clear in a meeting, credible under client scrutiny, and visually composed without looking machine-generated.

Non-negotiable outcome

• Preserve source meaning and distinguish facts, assumptions, and illustrative content.
• Give every slide one purpose and one audience takeaway.
• Prefer clarity, logic, and speaking flow over decoration.
• Keep the visual system consistent while varying layouts intentionally.
• Never invent metrics, cases, quotations, customer claims, or sources.
• Never declare completion before rendering and visually inspecting every slide.

Intake

Confirm or infer only when low-risk:

1. Audience and decision makers.
2. Meeting objective and expected outcome.
3. Speaking time and likely slide count.
4. Language, tone, and localization needs.
5. Source-of-truth materials and confidentiality constraints.
6. Brand, template, or existing-deck requirements.

Ask for missing information when it could materially change the storyline or claims. Otherwise, proceed with a clearly labeled assumption register.

Evidence discipline

Build a working evidence map before drafting:

• Provided fact: traceable to user material.
• Derived statement: a faithful synthesis of provided facts.
• Assumption: necessary for planning; label and request confirmation.
• Illustrative: fictional example or placeholder; label visibly.
• Unknown: do not fill. Turn it into a question, dependency, or TBD.

Do not turn an assumption into an asserted fact. Keep source references in speaker notes or a final source slide when the user supplies them.

Workflow

1. Inspect inputs

• Inventory all source files and identify the authoritative version.
• For an existing .pptx, inspect slide count, size, masters, layouts, fonts, colors, and content density.
• Run scripts/analyze_pptx.py when a deck or template is supplied.
• Preserve confidentiality; extract reusable principles rather than copying identifying content.

2. Build the storyline before design

Write a slide plan containing:

Field	Required content
Slide purpose	Why the slide exists
Takeaway title	The conclusion or question the audience should retain
Evidence	Facts, visuals, or explicit assumptions supporting the takeaway
Layout intent	The simplest visual structure for the content
Transition	Why the next slide follows

Use the decision-backward method in writing-and-storyline.md. Remove slides that do not advance the conversation.

3. Select a controlled style

Choose one primary style and, at most, one secondary style:

• Executive Minimal for decisions, summaries, and proposals.
• Consulting Clean for assessments, workshops, comparisons, and recommendations.
• Technology Narrative for architecture, cloud, AI, and enterprise solutions.
• Japanese Customer Friendly for calm, contextual, risk-transparent customer communication.

Read design-system.md for tokens, layout patterns, typography, and style-specific rules.

4. Create or edit the deck

For a new deck:

• Use the available presentation-generation toolchain.
• Prefer editable native PowerPoint text, shapes, tables, and charts.
• Use PptxGenJS with an HTML-to-PowerPoint workflow when available for precise layout.
• Use python-pptx for deterministic, simple layouts when it is the more reliable option.
• Use 16:9 unless the user or template requires another ratio.

For an existing deck:

• Preserve slide masters, layouts, theme relationships, notes, and brand assets.
• Use targeted OOXML edits when a library cannot preserve required features.
• Modify only slides and elements in scope.
• Re-run validation after structural edits.

Do not flatten editable diagrams into screenshots unless fidelity requires it and the user accepts the tradeoff.

5. Preflight

Run:

python scripts/lint_pptx.py output.pptx --output qa/lint.json
python scripts/render_pptx.py output.pptx --output-dir qa/rendered --cols 4

Treat automated checks as triage, not proof of quality.

6. Review every rendered slide

Review both:

• The contact sheet for narrative rhythm, repetition, density, and visual pacing.
• Each full-size slide for overflow, clipping, alignment, spacing, contrast, readability, chart clarity, and awkward line breaks.

Use quality-review.md. Fix issues, re-render the entire deck, and repeat until clean.

7. Deliver

Provide:

• The final .pptx.
• A short summary of storyline and style choices.
• Any unresolved assumptions, missing evidence, or editable placeholders.
• The render/contact sheet when useful for review.

Natural, human editorial standard

• Write specific takeaway titles; avoid generic slogans and inflated claims.
• Vary layout according to content, not for novelty.
• Allow controlled asymmetry, different column ratios, and occasional quiet slides.
• Use one strong visual hierarchy instead of many decorative accents.
• Keep clean white or near-white surfaces dominant; avoid large saturated accent panels and uninterrupted color slabs.
• Use dark, projection-safe text and clearly visible support lines; do not rely on pale gray or low-contrast accents for structure.
• When no client brand is supplied, use the reference-derived role palette in design-system.md instead of generic Office theme colors.
• Use only a slight corner radius on cards and panels; reserve pill shapes for intentional tags or status badges.
• Keep repeated components aligned but avoid cloning every slide.
• Use concrete nouns and verbs. Remove filler, repetition, and marketing gloss.
• Prefer one diagram with a clear reading path over a dense “everything map.”
• Use icons only when they improve scanning; keep one icon family and stroke style.
• Use photographs only when they are authentic, relevant, licensed, and compositionally useful.
• Keep caveats, risks, dependencies, and next steps visible when they matter.

Content limits

• Aim for one message per slide.
• Prefer 15–18 pt body text; use smaller text only for labels or citations.
• Keep most slides below roughly 80 words.
• Break dense architecture, roadmap, and matrix content into overview/detail sequences.
• Avoid more than 3–5 peer items on one slide unless the audience must compare them.
• Never use a quote layout without an actual attributed quote.

Bundled resources

• references/design-system.md: four styles, typography, color, layout, and sample-derived principles.
• references/writing-and-storyline.md: narrative planning, title writing, evidence language, and localization.
• references/quality-review.md: automated and visual completion gates.
• scripts/analyze_pptx.py: inspect a deck without reproducing its confidential text.
• scripts/lint_pptx.py: flag probable overflow, out-of-bounds objects, tiny text, density, and text-on-text collisions.
• scripts/render_pptx.py: render all slides and build a contact sheet.
• scripts/create_smoke_test.py: generate a fictional deck used to test this skill.

Example invocations

• “Use $craft-client-pptx to turn these workshop notes into a 12-minute Consulting Clean proposal for a Japanese manufacturing client.”
• “Use $craft-client-pptx to simplify this architecture deck into a customer-facing Technology Narrative. Do not change any facts.”
• “Use $craft-client-pptx to edit this executive review deck, tighten the storyline, and return a fully rendered, visually checked .pptx.”