slide-generation
This guide explains how to get the best results when you ask your AI teammate to create a presentation. It covers how to write the brief, how to choose a visual style, what charts and images are supported, how to edit a deck after it is generated, and how to export it.
Example: a finished 9-slide pitch deck in the Clay style.
1. How it works
When you ask for a deck, the teammate runs a fixed pipeline:
Understands the brief - who the audience is, what the deck is for, how many slides, which language, which tone.
Plans the outline - one line per slide with a slide type (title, problem, solution, data visualization, pricing, …), plus where the "poster moments" and charts will go.
Commits to one visual style - one of 22 design "lanes" (see §3). Colours, fonts, spacing and chart colours all come from that lane and stay consistent across every slide.
Builds every slide - content, optional illustration, and the HTML for each slide.
Assembles and validates - the slides are merged into a single interactive HTML deck (1280×720, 16:9) and checked for structural errors.
Delivers the deck - you receive one
.htmlfile named after the deck title (for exampleq3-market-update.html).
A typical 8-slide deck takes a few minutes. Decks with illustrations take longer because each image is generated on demand.
2. Writing a good brief
The quality of the deck tracks the quality of the brief. Five things matter most.
Say who it is for and what it should achieve. "A 6-slide deck for our Series A investors to show traction and ask for $4M" produces a much better result than "a deck about our company". Audience and purpose drive the slide types, the tone and the style.
State the slide count, or use a size word. An explicit number always wins ("7 slides"). If you do not give one, the teammate infers: "brief / short / quick" → 3–4 slides; no size given → 6–8 slides; "detailed / comprehensive / in-depth" → 10–12 slides. A deck is never fewer than 3 slides unless you ask for a single slide.
Give your real numbers. Every figure you include is used verbatim — company names, revenue, growth rates, team size, dates. Numbers are never rounded or paraphrased. If you give a series (monthly users, quarterly revenue), it becomes a chart. If the topic is quantitative but you give no numbers, the chart will use clearly-labelled illustrative data with an "illustrative" note on the axis; replace it with real data by asking for an edit.
Name the language. Decks can be written in any language. Say "in Vietnamese" or "in French" if it is not obvious from your message. Image prompts are always written in English internally, so illustration quality does not depend on the deck language.
Optionally, name the style. Either use a lane name from §3 ("Swiss style", "make it Editorial"), a theme keyword ("dark", "corporate", "playful"), or describe the feeling ("premium, quiet, expensive"). If you say nothing, the teammate picks the lane that fits the audience and topic.
Example briefs
"Make a deck about our product"
"8-slide sales deck for enterprise IT buyers introducing our data-pipeline product. Key numbers: 40% faster ingestion, 99.98% uptime, 120 customers incl. two Fortune 500. Swiss style."
"Presentation on Q3"
"Quarterly business review for the exec team, 10 slides. Revenue Q1–Q3: $1.2M, $1.5M, $2.1M. Churn dropped from 4.1% to 2.6%. Headcount 34→51. Financial Broadsheet style, formal tone."
"Slides for my talk"
"Conference talk, 12 slides, developer audience, on why we rewrote our scheduler in Rust. Bold and a bit irreverent. Include an architecture slide and a before/after latency chart (p99: 840ms → 95ms)."
"Training deck"
"Onboarding deck for new customer-support hires, 6 slides, warm and friendly tone, in Vietnamese. Cover the 3 ticket priorities, the 24h SLA, and the escalation path.
3. Visual styles (lanes)
Every deck commits to exactly one lane. A lane is a complete design recipe: background, ink and accent colour, heading and body typeface, component shapes, texture, and the colour ramp used for charts. Lanes are never blended - that is what keeps the deck from looking generic.
You can request a lane by name, by theme keyword, or by describing the mood. The table below lists all 22.
Editorial / Magazine
cream paper, ink headlines in a serif, one vermillion accent
thought leadership, brand story, research summaries, longform content
"editorial", "magazine"
Swiss / Post-Swiss
cool grey field, tight grotesque type, signal-yellow accent, grid discipline
B2B SaaS, infrastructure, anything that should look engineered
"swiss"
Brutalist Web
raw paper, heavy black display type, monospace details, hard shadows
developer tools, hacker-energy launches, talks you want remembered
"brutalist" (needs a bold or playful tone)
Warm Minimal / Muji
off-white, quiet serif, terracotta accent, lots of air
brand decks, design studios, hospitality, wellness
"warm minimal", "elegant"
Dark Luxury / Late-Night
deep forest field, sand-gold accent, serif headlines
premium brands, high-end hospitality, evening keynotes
"dark luxury", "modern dark"
Technical / Systems
charcoal field, terminal green accent, mono details, dot grid
dev tools, infra, observability, AI/ML platforms, RFC walkthroughs
"technical", "tech"
Organic / Natural
sage field, rust accent, Garamond serif, optional handwritten notes
sustainability, food, agriculture, craft, slow brands
"organic", "nature"
Pop / Poster
warm pink field, coral accent, oversized display type
product launches, marketing decks, talks that must be unforgettable
"pop", "startup bold"
Apple Keynote (Refined)
near-white field, one sand accent, restrained and centred
executive narratives, product reveals to non-technical audiences
"keynote", "minimal executive"
Art Deco / Heritage Gold
near-black field, deco gold, Marcellus display type
anniversaries, awards nights, heritage brands, galas
"art deco", "heritage gold"
Financial Broadsheet
salmon newsprint, oxblood accent, ledger rules
market updates, investor decks, strategy reviews for finance audiences
"broadsheet", "financial"
Neo-Memphis / Sticker Pop
cream field, coral accent, geometric stickers and confetti
consumer apps, education, community decks, Gen-Z marketing
"playful", "memphis" (needs a playful tone)
Drafting / Industrial Graphite
graphite paper, safety-orange accent, dimension lines
manufacturing, hardware, logistics, engineering reviews
"industrial", "drafting"
Riso Print / Zine
risograph paper, misregistered coral and green, halftone dots
culture and community decks, event recaps, indie launches
"zine", "riso" (needs a playful tone)
Corporate Navy, Done Right
warm paper, navy as ink, warm gold accent
banks, insurance, government, any blue-led brand
"corporate", "corporate blue", "navy"
Academic / Scientific
warm white, STIX serif, numbered everything, references slide
research summaries, whitepaper walkthroughs, university decks, due diligence
"academic", "scientific"
Film Noir / Monochrome
black field, grayscale imagery, one red accent
agencies, portfolios, photography- or film-led decks, fashion
"noir", "monochrome"
Retro Terminal / Phosphor
black field, amber phosphor text, VT323 pixels
CLI tools, retrocomputing topics, hackathon demos, eng humour
"terminal", "phosphor" (needs a playful tone)
Lookbook / Fashion Minimal
pure white, hairline type, full-bleed photography
lookbooks, media kits, photo-led company profiles
"lookbook", "fashion"
Pixel / 8-bit
dark field, pixel display type, checkerboard textures
games, retro-tech, dev-facing launches with humour
"pixel", "8-bit" (needs a playful tone)
Clay / Soft Tactile
warm cream, soft coral, rounded 3D-clay shapes
kids and education products, wellness, consumer onboarding
"clay", "soft"
Aurora / Frosted Glass
pale violet field, magenta accent, frosted panels
consumer SaaS, ed-tech, creator platforms, product dashboards
"aurora", "glassmorphism", "glass"
Rules every lane follows
These are applied automatically. Knowing them helps you understand why a deck looks the way it does, and what to ask for if you want something changed.
One dominant surface, one secondary tone, one accent. Saturation lives only in the accent colour. Charts follow the same rule: one highlighted value in the accent, everything else muted.
Backgrounds are never pure white or pure black. Each lane has its own tinted paper or dark field.
At most three enclosed boxes per slide, and never three equal cards in a row. Content sits on the page; cards are reserved for the one or two things that need containing.
Two or three "poster moments" per deck. Slides where a single number, word or image is the whole slide. These are the slides people remember.
No two consecutive slides share the same layout. Density alternates: dense → poster → breather.
One small recurring mark on every slide (a folio like
04 / 09 — TRACTION, a texture, a corner shape), never a header or footer band, and the deck title appears on the cover only.The cover is the same lane at higher intensity, not a different design.
If you want to break one of these deliberately ("I want a footer with our logo on every slide"), say so explicitly in the brief or as an edit.
Tone and "committed-bit" lanes
Five lanes are strong stylistic statements: Brutalist, Neo-Memphis, Riso/Zine, Retro Terminal and Pixel. They are only used when your tone supports them (playful, bold, irreverent). With a formal tone the teammate falls back to the lane's quieter neighbour (for example Brutalist → Swiss). If you really want Brutalist for a bank, say "Brutalist, and yes I mean it".
4. Charts
Any deck that contains numbers gets at least one full chart slide; decks of 10 or more slides get two. A chart slide is built as a poster moment: one sentence of insight as the headline, one chart occupying more than half the slide, one highlighted value, one source line.
Supported chart shapes
The shape is chosen from what the data is, not from a default. You can also ask for a specific shape.
a trend over time (6–12 points)
line or area
"line chart", "trend"
a few categories or a short time series
column
"columns", "bar chart"
a ranking or comparison of named items
horizontal bar or dot plot
"ranking", "dot plot"
composition of a whole
stacked bar
"stacked", "breakdown"
before/after, or two points in time for several items
slope chart or dumbbell
"before/after", "slope"
A vs B across categories
paired columns
"compare A and B"
how a total is built from parts
waterfall
"waterfall", "bridge"
many small series
sparkline row
"sparklines"
goal attainment per item
progress bars
"progress"
two-dimensional intensity (day × hour, region × month)
heatmap
"heatmap"
share of a whole with one dominant segment (≤5 segments)
donut (pie only in playful lanes)
"donut", "share"
one value against a target
semi-circle gauge (one per slide)
"gauge"
several goals on the same scale
radial bars
"radial"
a capability profile on 5–8 axes
radar
"radar", "spider"
two numeric variables per item (three → bubble)
scatter / bubble
"scatter", "bubble"
values by region
tile map
"map"
term frequency (feedback themes, search terms)
word cloud
"word cloud"
Three things are never produced: 3D charts, exploded pie slices, and a dashboard of many small gauges. Two chart slides in the same deck use different shapes.
How to supply chart data
Plain text is enough. Any of these work:
"Monthly active users Jan–Jun: 42k, 48k, 51k, 63k, 70k, 86k. Highlight June."
"Completion rate by age: 4–6 → 62%, 7–8 → 87%, 9–10 → 74%."
"Revenue split: Enterprise 58%, SMB 31%, Self-serve 11%."
A pasted table or CSV snippet.
Include the unit ("k users", "%", "$M") and, if you want it, the source ("Internal analytics, Jun 2026"). Up to three series per chart; one series is the default and usually the strongest.
Interactivity
Charts are interactive in the browser: hovering a bar or point shows its value, and the other values dim. Bars grow in, lines draw, the headline number counts up. None of this depends on a script — if the deck is viewed somewhere that strips JavaScript, everything renders in its final static state.
5. Images and illustrations
Narrative slides (cover, problem, solution, case study, team, call to action) can carry a generated illustration. Data slides, comparison tables, pricing, agenda and summary slides do not — the structure is the visual there. A typical deck has illustrations on 30–50% of its slides.
Illustrations are generated in the deck's lane: same palette, same treatment (grayscale for Editorial and Noir, duotone in the accent, sepia for Organic and Deco, clay render for Clay). The first illustrated slide sets the visual language and every later image references it, so the set stays consistent.
You can steer illustrations in the brief:
"Illustrate the problem slide with a tired parent and a tablet."
"No illustrations, text and charts only." (Text-only decks are a valid, faster outcome.)
"Use our product screenshots instead of illustrations." (Attach the screenshots.)
Photographs you attach are treated to match the lane; untreated full-colour stock imagery is never used.
6. Slide types you can ask for
You do not need to specify slide types; the outline is planned from the brief. But you can request or name them when you have a structure in mind ("add an FAQ slide", "I want a 2×2 positioning matrix on slide 5").
Opening
title, cover, agenda, introduction, section divider
Narrative
problem statement, solution overview, how it works, case study, before/after
Product
features, benefits, components, architecture, alternatives, comparison, pricing
Evidence
data visualization, results/metrics, data facts, ROI, funnel, logo wall, testimonials, quote
Plan
roadmap, timeline, milestones, history, next steps
Structure
executive summary, matrix (2×2), FAQ, summary, references
Visual
poster / big number / statement, image full-bleed, image split, image grid, team
Closing
call to action, thank you
7. Editing a deck after it is generated
You do not need to regenerate a deck to change it. Ask for the edit and only the affected slides are rebuilt.
"Change the title on slide 2 to 'Our Growth Story'"
slide 2 is rewritten, the deck is re-assembled
"Make slide 4 a two-column layout"
slide 4's layout changes, content is kept
"Add a pricing slide after slide 3"
a new slide is planned and built; later slides are renumbered
"Delete slide 6" / "Move the summary to the end"
the outline is updated and the deck re-assembled
"Add a revenue chart to slide 3: Q1 $1.2M, Q2 $1.5M, Q3 $2.1M"
slide 3 gets a chart; the rest of the deck is untouched
"Switch the whole deck to Corporate Navy"
a new design system is built and every slide is restyled; existing images are kept
"Better illustration on slide 1, more optimistic"
only that image is regenerated
"Replace the illustrative numbers with these real ones: …"
the chart slide is rebuilt with your data
If you have edited the HTML file yourself and then ask for a change, attach your edited file — it is treated as the latest version so your manual edits are not overwritten.
8. Presenting and exporting
In the browser. Open the .html file. Navigate with →/← or Space, swipe on touch devices, Home/End for first/last slide. On slides with step builds, each keypress reveals the next step before moving on. The deck scales to any window size while keeping 16:9.
PDF. Use your browser's Print → Save as PDF, or the platform's export. Each slide becomes one 1280×720 page and all animated elements are rendered in their final state. If you are using your own headless-browser export, no flags are needed; alternatively open the deck with #print appended to the URL to force the static, fully-revealed state.
PowerPoint. The deck HTML is structured for the platform's PowerPoint converter; ask for a .pptx export after the deck is generated. Interactivity (hover, builds) does not carry into PowerPoint by design; the static layout does.
Sharing. The HTML file is self-contained apart from the font and Tailwind CDN links and the hosted illustration URLs, so it can be emailed or hosted anywhere. Illustrations load from your workspace's image host.
9. Best practices
Do
Lead with audience and purpose. Everything downstream is derived from them.
Give real numbers, with units. They are used exactly as written and become charts.
Pick one lane and one tone, or describe a mood and let the teammate choose. Do not ask for a blend ("a bit Swiss, a bit Pop").
Ask for a specific chart shape when you already know the story ("slope chart, week 1 vs week 8").
Keep one message per slide. If you find yourself listing six points for one slide, ask for two slides.
Iterate with edits rather than regenerating. A title change takes seconds; a full regeneration takes minutes.
Attach logos, screenshots or photos you want used; say where they go.
Avoid
"Make it look modern and professional." This is the recipe for a generic deck. Name a lane or a mood instead.
Asking for a header and footer on every slide. It is the fastest way to make a deck look templated; the recurring mark is a small corner folio instead. If your brand guidelines require it, say so explicitly.
Asking for pie charts by default. Donut is used where a share-of-whole is the story; most "pie" data reads better as a bar or stacked bar.
Asking for gradients, gradient text or emoji in headlines. Only two lanes have a gradient background (Creative Gradient and Aurora) and none use emoji.
Very long bullet lists. Bullets are a last resort; the teammate will convert lists into numbered sequences, claim/evidence pairs or a stat plus a sentence. If you need a dense reference slide, say "this one can be dense".
Requesting more than 12 slides in one go. Split long decks into sections and generate each, or ask for an outline first and confirm it.
10. Troubleshooting
The deck looks different from what I pictured. Name a lane from §3 and ask for a restyle ("switch to Warm Minimal"). Existing content and images are kept.
A chart shows "illustrative" data. You gave a quantitative topic but no numbers. Send the real series and ask for the chart slide to be rebuilt.
An illustration is missing and the slide is text-only. The image tool was unavailable at generation time and the deck continued without stalling. Ask for "illustrations on slides 1, 3 and 5" and they will be added.
The PDF is missing content on some pages. You are exporting with an older deck file (generated before September 2026). Ask for the deck to be re-assembled, or open it with #print appended to the URL before exporting.
I edited the HTML by hand and now an edit request broke the layout. Attach your edited file when asking for the edit; it is decompiled and used as the source of truth. Avoid pasting a whole HTML document inside a slide — each slide is a single <section>.
The deck is in the wrong language. Say "in Vietnamese" (or the language you need) in the brief; the language is inferred from your message otherwise.
11. Prompt templates
Copy, fill in, send.
Investor pitch
Create a {N}-slide investor pitch deck for {company}, a {one-line description}, aimed at {seed / Series A / …} investors. Problem: {…}. Solution: {…}. Traction: {metric 1}, {metric 2}, {metric 3 as a series over time}. Team: {…}. Ask: {amount} for {use of funds}. Style: {lane}. Tone: {formal / confident / bold}.
Quarterly review
Build a {N}-slide quarterly business review for {audience}. Revenue by quarter: {…}. Key wins: {…}. Risks: {…}. Next quarter priorities: {…}. Include a waterfall for how we got from {start} to {end}. Style: Financial Broadsheet.
Product launch
{N}-slide launch deck for {product} to {audience}. What's new: {3–4 items, one is the headline}. Before/after numbers: {…}. Pricing tiers: {…}. Style: {Pop / Swiss / Aurora}. Illustrate the cover and the problem slide.
Training / onboarding
{N}-slide onboarding deck for {role}, in {language}, warm and clear. Cover: {topic 1}, {topic 2}, {topic 3}. End with an FAQ and a next-steps slide. Style: Clay.
Conference talk
{N}-slide talk for {conference / audience} on {topic}. Structure: hook → problem → what we tried → what worked → results → takeaways. Results: {numbers}. One architecture slide. Style: {Technical / Brutalist}, tone bold.
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