Presentations Skill

End-to-end content design for slide decks. Five sequential phases produce: an audience brief, a message architecture, a storyboard, per-slide drafts, and a critique report. The deliverable is a single deck.md file with YAML front-matter per slide. Rendering, recording, and image generation are out of scope.

When to Use

Use this skill when the user wants to plan or refine the content of a slide deck: who the audience is, what message moves them, how to order the slides, what each slide should say and show, what speaker notes back it up, and whether the result will land.

Disambiguate against three nearby skills:

• Not `writing:writing` with `--format talk`. That produces a prose speech (a written piece a presenter reads or delivers). The presentations skill produces a deck (sentence-takeaway headlines, visual briefs, structured speaker notes per slide).
• Not `writing:pyramid`. That produces a memo: governing idea plus grouped reasons rendered as written prose. The presentations skill uses the same answer-first logic but outputs a slide-by-slide storyboard, not a memo.
• Not `workbench:crafting-presentations`. That renders a deck as multi-file HTML with a slide-stage runtime and a presenter sidecar. The presentations skill stops at deck.md; the user can invoke workbench:crafting-presentations next and pass deck.md as the source brief.

Two entry modes:

• Design mode (default): runs all five phases against a fresh idea. Output dir contains five named artifacts.
• Audit mode: consumes an existing deck.md and runs only Phase 5 (heuristic audit plus three critic personas). Triggered when the user provides a path to an existing deck.

Tool Preference

Filesystem operations only. The skill reads templates from its own references/ directory, writes phase artifacts to the working directory, and (in Phase 5) dispatches three critic personas as parallel subagents using workbench:dispatching-parallel-agents. No external services, no APIs, no rendering. Use the host platform's read/write/edit primitives directly.

Platform Adaptation

Use the host platform's equivalent tools without changing the workflow:

When a platform cannot dispatch subagents, run the three Phase 5 critic personas inline in the orchestrator: load each persona prompt from references/critic-prompts.md, run its analysis, append its findings to audit-report.md, and continue.

Workflow

Five phases, each writing its own artifact to the working directory. File presence determines state: a phase is complete iff its artifact file exists and is non-empty. The user may resume at any later phase if the upstream artifacts are present.

Working directory: .workbench/presentations/<topic-slug>/ by default. Override via .workbench/config.md ## Output paths Presentations:. The topic slug comes from the user's intake (Phase 1) and is kebab-cased.

Step 1: Intake

Goal: establish who the audience is, what the deck must accomplish, and what success looks like.

Inputs: the user's request, references/audience-brief-template.md, references/time-budget.md.

Process: ask the user the following questions, one at a time (in autonomous runs, self-answer each):

1. Who is the audience? Capture role, seniority, prior knowledge of the topic, what is at stake for them, and the two most likely objections.
2. What is the genre and length? Choose one of: executive briefing, keynote, training, pitch, technical talk. State the planned duration in minutes.
3. What is the governing idea, in one sentence under 20 words, no jargon? This becomes the title slide's headline.
4. What is the call to action? Capture actor (who must act), action (what they must do), timing (when), and consequence (what happens if they delay).

Output: audience-brief.md, filled in from the template.

Pass condition: every field in audience-brief.md is populated and the governing idea fits one sentence.

Step 2: Message Architecture

Goal: turn the intake into an answer-first argument and a transformation arc.

Inputs: audience-brief.md, references/message-architecture-template.md.

Process:

1. Write the SCQA opener: Situation (stable context the audience already accepts), Complication (the tension), Question (the question the complication forces), Answer (the governing idea as resolution).
2. Build the answer-first pyramid: one governing idea, two to four MECE grouped reasons, evidence under each reason. Each reason must be a sentence that states a conclusion, not a topic noun.
3. Write the transformation arc: current state, insight, future state. The arc is what the audience moves from and to; without a delta, the deck is a report rather than a persuasion.
4. Restate the CTA from intake in operational terms: actor, action, timing, consequence.

Output: message-architecture.md.

Pass condition: the four artifacts (SCQA, pyramid, transformation arc, CTA) are present and the pyramid's reasons stated as conclusions not topics.

Step 3: Storyboard

Goal: order the slides and assign each one a slide_type, a one-line sentence headline, and a one-line visual brief.

Inputs: audience-brief.md, message-architecture.md, references/storyboard-template.md, references/slide-type-catalog.md, references/time-budget.md.

Process:

1. Compute the recommended slide-count band: look up the genre and duration captured in Phase 1 in references/time-budget.md and read off the band (for example a 20-minute executive briefing recommends 8 to 12 slides).
2. Draft the slide sequence. Use the eight content-side slide types from references/slide-type-catalog.md: Title, Agenda, SectionDivider, Decision, Evidence, Transformation, Closing, Appendix. The recommended ordering is Title, Agenda (optional for talks under 10 minutes), SectionDivider blocks for the body, Decision and Evidence and Transformation slides inside the body, Closing, then any Appendix slides parked at the end.
3. For each slide write: slide number, slide_type, the sentence-takeaway headline (not a topic noun), and a one-line visual brief naming the dominant proof object.

Output: storyboard.md.

Pass condition: every slide has a sentence headline (not a noun phrase), slide count falls within the recommended band (or the user explicitly overrides), and the body covers each reason from the message architecture's pyramid.

Step 4: Slide Drafts

Goal: expand every slide in the storyboard to the full per-slide YAML front-matter schema plus an ASCII layout sketch.

Inputs: storyboard.md, audience-brief.md, message-architecture.md, references/slide-brief-template.md, references/slide-type-catalog.md, references/assertion-evidence-pattern.md.

Process: for each slide in the storyboard, produce a ## Slide NN: <headline> block followed by a fenced yaml block matching the schema in references/slide-brief-template.md. The schema's six top-level keys are slide_type, headline, visual, speaker_notes, accessibility, and sources. Below the YAML, include an ASCII layout sketch using only plain ASCII characters (-, |, +, no Unicode box drawing) so the storyboard reader sees the spatial intent without needing an HTML render.

Apply the assertion-evidence pattern: the slide states (headline) and shows (visual); the speaker explains (speaker_notes). Do not duplicate the headline in the visual brief; do not duplicate the visual brief in the speaker notes.

Output: deck.md.

Pass condition: every slide in the storyboard has a corresponding block in deck.md; every block contains all six required YAML keys; ASCII layout sketches are present.

Step 5: Critique Panel

Goal: audit deck.md against deterministic constraints and qualitative critic personas, then either pass or surface remaining issues for user decision.

Inputs: all earlier artifacts, references/audit-checklist.md, references/critic-prompts.md, references/accessibility-preflight.md.

Process (two tiers, in order):

1. Heuristic audit (inline, deterministic). Walk every slide in deck.md and check each item in references/audit-checklist.md. Slide types SectionDivider and Appendix are exempt from item (a) (sentence-headline requirement). Append a numbered violation list to audit-report.md with slide references.

1. Critic personas (three subagents, parallel via workbench:dispatching-parallel-agents). Each persona reads its assigned upstream artifacts and deck.md, then returns CRITICAL, MAJOR, or MINOR findings. The three personas are documented in references/critic-prompts.md:

• Audience critic: fit to the named audience.
• Argument critic: logical force, evidence sufficiency, objection preemption, close landing.
• Visual-and-Accessibility critic: one focal point per slide, one chart one point, accessibility plan adequacy.

Append the consolidated critic findings to audit-report.md.

1. Gate. If any CRITICAL findings remain after this iteration, re-dispatch up to one more time (two iterations total). After two iterations, present the remaining CRITICAL issues to the user and ask whether to mark the deck ready with known issues, pause for manual intervention, or cancel.

Output: audit-report.md.

Pass condition: zero CRITICAL findings, or explicit user decision to proceed with known issues.

Audit Mode

Triggered when the user provides a path to an existing deck.md instead of a fresh request. The skill skips Phases 1 to 4 and runs Phase 5 directly against the input deck. Output audit-report.md is written next to the input deck unless the user supplies an output path.

Audit mode is markdown-only. If the user asks to audit a PowerPoint, Keynote, or Google Slides export, ask them to paste or convert the content into a deck.md first. Binary slide-format import is out of scope.

Audit mode skips the upstream artifacts (audience-brief.md, message-architecture.md, storyboard.md) which the critic personas would normally read. In their absence, the critics work from deck.md alone and flag any missing context they need; the user may then provide a one-paragraph audience and intent summary and request a re-run.

State and Resume

Working directory: .workbench/presentations/<topic-slug>/ by default. Resolvable via .workbench/config.md ## Output paths Presentations:.

File-presence rule: a phase is complete iff its named artifact file exists and is non-empty. The artifact file names are audience-brief.md, message-architecture.md, storyboard.md, deck.md, audit-report.md.

On re-invocation, scan the working directory and report the latest completed phase to the user. Offer two options:

• Resume at the next phase, treating earlier artifacts as authoritative.
• Restart a specific earlier phase (which invalidates all later artifacts and asks the user to delete them or move them to an archive subdir).

Never silently overwrite a later artifact when restarting an earlier phase.

Output Format

Format: markdown only. There is no HTML output mode for this skill; rendering is delegated to workbench:crafting-presentations.

Path resolution order, highest precedence first:

1. .workbench/autopilot.md ## Documentation paths Presentations:.
2. .workbench/config.md ## Output paths Presentations:.
3. .workbench/presentations/<topic-slug>/ (default).

The deck.md artifact's per-slide YAML front-matter is the hand-off contract to workbench:crafting-presentations. The full schema is documented in references/slide-brief-template.md. The content-side slide_type enum is intentionally distinct from workbench:crafting-presentations' rendering-side template catalog; the mapping is documented in references/slide-type-catalog.md as a recommendation, not a constraint.

Edge Cases

• Missing prerequisite artifact on phase jump. If the user invokes --phase 4 and storyboard.md is missing, ask via the host question primitive whether to (a) run Phase 3 first, (b) accept a degraded run where Phase 4 reads the message architecture directly without a storyboard, or (c) cancel.
• Audit mode against a deck without YAML front-matter. Real-world deck.md inputs are usually prose-outline markdown (one ## Slide N: <title> per slide with bullet body) rather than the skill's per-slide YAML schema. When the input lacks the YAML schema, audit mode runs in advisory mode: the heuristic audit walks each check against the visible content as best it can (treating slide headings as headline values, bullets as implied body, and flagging the absence of every other required key as a structural finding), and the critic personas are not dispatched because they need the structural fields to operate reliably. The audit-report's "Recommended next steps" then prominently recommends reformatting the deck into the schema before a full Phase 5 dispatch. If the input is in YAML schema but has missing required keys per slide, that is a true malformation: the heuristic audit reports the missing keys and stops before dispatching critics. The user fixes the structure and re-runs.
• Critic gate fails twice. Present remaining CRITICAL findings to the user; ask whether to mark ready with known issues, pause, or cancel. Standard convention matching the writing-plugin's panel-gate handling.
• Slide count band breached deliberately. The audit checklist flags the breach; if the user accepts (for example a deliberately dense training deck), record the override in audit-report.md under a "User overrides" heading so reviewers can see the deviation is intentional.
• Governing-idea sentence too long. If the Phase 1 governing idea is longer than 20 words, ask the user to shorten before proceeding; long governing ideas almost always indicate the audience or scope is muddled.
• Genre mismatch. If genre and length combine implausibly (for example a 5-minute training session), surface the mismatch at Phase 1 and ask whether the user meant a pitch or a quick demo.
• Em-dash and en-dash discipline. This skill body and the bundled references must contain no U+2014 (em-dash) or U+2013 (en-dash) characters; the unit test tests/unit/test-presentations-skill.sh enforces the lint with grep -rqP '[\x{2014}\x{2013}]' over the entire skill tree.

Key Principles

• One message per slide. If a slide is making two points, split it into two slides.
• Sentence headlines, not topic nouns. "Churn rose after response times crossed 12 hours" beats "Churn trends".
• The slide states and shows; the speaker explains and connects. Reading slide text aloud wastes the spoken channel and increases cognitive load (Mayer redundancy principle).
• Audience first. The deck is a means to move someone from one state to another; if the audience or the desired delta is unclear, the deck cannot succeed.
• Transformation contrast. Show current state versus future state explicitly; without a delta, the deck is a report not a persuasion.
• Assertion-evidence over bullet dumps. Garner and Alley's experimental evidence is that sentence-headline plus visual evidence produces stronger comprehension and delayed recall than topic-heading plus bullet stacks.
• One chart, one point, one intended comparison. Tufte, Few, Cleveland and McGill all converge on the same rule from different angles.
• Accessibility is the floor, not the ceiling. WCAG 2.2 AA contrast (4.5:1 normal, 3:1 large) and alt text for every non-text slide are the minimum, not the target.
• Specific calls to action. Actor, action, timing, consequence. "Any questions?" is not a call to action; it is a stage exit.

For a deeper reading list (Minto, Duarte, Mayer, Tufte, Knaflic, Alley, Reynolds, Atkinson, plus the WCAG and TEDx primary sources), see references/canonical-sources.md.