Render

Render Pack — "Make my knowledge look like something"

render is the output layer. Same content, many presentations: a deck for a talk, a chart for a post, a printable brief for a stakeholder, a graph for your own orientation. Everything lands in outputs/ and is viewable directly in Obsidian (with Marp plugin for slides, standard image embeds for charts).

Commands

/slides — Render notes as a Marp deck

When the user invokes /slides :

1. Gather source material:

• If ``, search compiled/ for related notes and load top 5-10.
• If ``, use that single note as the spine.

1. Draft an outline: title slide → problem → 3-5 key points → synthesis → references.
2. Write Marp-flavored markdown to outputs/slides/.md:

```markdown --- marp: true theme: default paginate: true ---

#

---

## Problem

• ...

---

## Key idea 1

• ...

---

## References

• [[source-1]]
• [[source-2]]

```

1. Report the path and instructions to preview in Obsidian (Marp plugin) or export with marp --pdf.

Slide density rules:

• ≤ 6 bullets per slide.
• ≤ 12 words per bullet.
• One idea per slide.
• Always include a "References" slide at end linking back to the vault notes.

/brief — Render an exec brief (1-2 page PDF-ready)

When the user invokes /brief :

1. Draft a brief in this structure:

• Title + 1-line summary.
• "So what" — the single most important takeaway (2-3 sentences).
• 3 key findings (bullet list).
• Supporting evidence table.
• Recommendations / next steps.
• Sources.

1. Save to outputs/briefs/.md.
2. Suggest: pandoc -o .pdf to export.

/chart — Render a matplotlib chart from structured data

When the user invokes /chart :

1. Locate structured data (a dataset note under raw/datasets/, or an embedded table in a compiled note).
2. Decide chart type from the question shape:

• Time series → line.
• Comparison → bar.
• Distribution → histogram / violin.
• Part-of-whole → stacked bar (not pie).
• Correlation → scatter.

1. Write a standalone Python script to outputs/charts/.py:

``python import matplotlib.pyplot as plt import pandas as pd df = pd.read_csv("") # ... chart code ... plt.tight_layout() plt.savefig("outputs/charts/.png", dpi=200) ``

1. Run it. Save PNG next to the script.
2. Write a companion outputs/charts/.md that embeds the PNG and explains the chart.

/graph — Render a concept graph

When the user invokes /graph []:

1. Build a node set from compiled/concepts/*.md.
2. Build edges from wikilinks between them.
3. If `` provided, restrict to 2-hop neighborhood.
4. Emit a Mermaid diagram:

``markdown `mermaid graph TD A[Concept A] --> B[Concept B] ... ` ``

1. Save to outputs/graphs/.md. Obsidian's native Mermaid renderer will draw it.
2. For large graphs (>40 nodes), use Graphviz DOT instead and export PNG.

/timeline-chart — Render a timeline as Gantt or dated bar

When the user invokes /timeline-chart :

1. Pull events from the relevant notes (look for dates in frontmatter and inline).
2. Output a Mermaid gantt block in outputs/charts/timeline-.md.

/flashcards — Render concepts as spaced-repetition cards

When the user invokes /flashcards :

1. Pull 10-30 concepts.
2. Emit Anki-compatible format:

`` Front: What is ? Back: (source: [[]]) ``

1. Save as outputs/flashcards/.tsv for Anki import.

/handbook — Compile a printable "handbook" PDF from a tag

When the user invokes /handbook :

1. List all compiled notes with that tag.
2. Order them by frontmatter order field if present, else alphabetical.
3. Concat into a single markdown with auto-generated TOC.
4. Save as outputs/handbooks/-handbook.md.
5. Suggest pandoc -o .pdf --toc for a bound PDF.

/talk — Full talk package (slides + speaker notes + handout)

When the user invokes /talk :

1. Run /slides for the deck.
2. Run /brief for a 1-page handout.
3. Add speaker notes to each slide (Marp: HTML comments inside the slide).
4. Output triple: outputs/slides/.md, outputs/briefs/.md, outputs/handouts/.md.

File-in-back rule

Every rendered artifact is itself a markdown file in the vault. That means:

• It is indexable by qa in future runs.
• It can be linked from concept pages (## Derived outputs).
• lint checks its frontmatter and links like any other note.

Obsidian plugin recommendations

• Marp for Obsidian — preview slides inline.
• Advanced Tables — for brief/handbook tables.
• Excalidraw — companion hand-drawn diagrams.
• Mermaid (core) — graph + timeline rendering.
• Pandoc plugin (or shell pandoc) — export to PDF.

Output frontmatter

Every rendered artifact gets:

---
type: rendered
render_kind: slides|brief|chart|graph|timeline|flashcards|handbook|talk
rendered_from: []
rendered_at: 
tags: [output, render]
---

So lint and qa can filter them out when reading source material.

Related skills (same pack)

• [[ingest]] — source of material
• [[compile]] — where the graph structure comes from
• [[qa]] — answers that can be rendered as slides/briefs
• [[lint]] — can render its report as a dashboard

Attribution

Pack inspired by Karpathy's preference for visual outputs (Marp slides, matplotlib, markdown reports) filed back into the vault so explorations compound.

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: markfive-proto
• Source: markfive-proto/obsidian-brain-vault
• License: MIT
• Homepage: https://supermarcus.ai/brain-os

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.