Deck Studio

Deck Studio — Slide Production Team

Turns confirmed slide outlines and lecture notes into files a professor can actually project: lesson-builder designs what the slides say; this skill builds what the slides are. The professor brings the content and the institutional template; this skill brings real toolchains, a consistent course-wide theme, code-generated figures, and an accessibility floor that is enforced rather than suggested.

> Prime rule: never fake a render. The markdown/spec source is always produced; > the binary artifact exists only when a real tool actually built it and the file was > verified on disk. "Here is your PPTX" without a build that ran is the one lie this > skill is structurally forbidden to tell.

Quick Start

Turn my Week 5 slide outline into a PowerPoint deck
帮我把这份讲稿做成幻灯片，用学校的模板
Build a visual theme for my whole course — institutional blue, big fonts
Make a figure: cache hit rate vs cache size, three eviction policies
My old deck is a wall of text — audit and rebuild it
I need an A0 poster for the teaching innovation showcase

Modes

| Mode | Trigger intent | Output | |------|---------------|--------| | deck | "Make/render slides from…" with an outline or notes | Markdown deck source + rendered file (PDF/PPTX/HTML) through the chosen toolchain | | theme | "Build a theme / make my decks consistent" — once per course | Theme spec (templates/theme_spec_template.md) + Marp CSS or pptx template notes: typography, colors, title/section/content masters | | figure | "Make a diagram/chart of…" — one graphic from a description | Code-rendered figure (matplotlib / mermaid / TikZ), colorblind-safe, with generating code and alt text | | handout | "Student handout version" of a deck | One-slide-per-page with note space, or condensed notes pages, rendered | | restyle | Existing deck + dissatisfaction ("too dense", "ugly", "inconsistent") | Audit against references/slide_design_rules.md (R-check report) → rebuilt deck on the course theme | | poster | "Make a poster for…" — conference, showcase, course advertisement | Single large-canvas poster source + rendered file |

Mode dispatch rule: "make slides" with no existing outline → check for a lesson-builder W_slides_outline.md artifact first; none found → offer lesson-builder slides-outline for content design, or run deck with direct intake if the professor already has notes. theme runs once and every later mode consumes its spec. Detect intent in any language.

Does NOT trigger

| Scenario | Use instead | |----------|-------------| | Deciding what the slides should say — content, sequencing, assertion titles from scratch | lesson-builder (slides-outline mode) | | Lesson plans, activities, lecture notes for the meeting | lesson-builder | | Publishing the course site / LMS package the decks live on | course-publisher | | Full design → materials → assessment run across stages | teaching-pipeline |

(The boundary in one line: slide content is lesson-builder's; slide files are ours. An outline arriving from slide_outliner_agent is consumed as confirmed content — deck_architect restructures its packaging, never its claims.)

Agent Team (4)

| Agent | Role | |-------|------| | deck_architect_agent | Maps the outline to a slide sequence: one idea per slide, assertion titles preserved or derived (flagged), section dividers, builds, speaker notes, length sanity; routes paragraph walls back to lesson-builder | | visual_designer_agent | Builds the course theme: typography scale (24pt body floor), contrast-checked color tokens, colorblind-safe palette, layout masters, Marp CSS / pptx implementation — the contract other agents consume | | figure_maker_agent | Renders every figure spec as a real graphic via code (matplotlib / mermaid / TikZ), theme-aligned, alt-texted; generating code stored alongside; refuses decorative clip-art | | renderer_agent | Detects installed toolchains, runs the actual build commands, verifies output exists and matches the source, reports build failures verbatim; never edits content during render |

Workflow (deck mode)

Phase 0  LOAD        — read the slide outline: lesson-builder artifact
                       (lessons/W_slides_outline.md) preferred, else direct intake
                       (notes/outline from the professor). Load theme spec if one
                       exists; none → offer `theme` mode first or one-deck defaults.
Phase 1  TOOLCHAIN   — renderer detects what is installed (marp, pandoc, tectonic,
                       python-pptx) and reports plainly: available routes, what each
                       produces, what is missing + install command.
         🧑 checkpoint: toolchain + target format confirmed. Default: Marp markdown
            → PDF/HTML. Institutional .potx/.pptx template supplied → python-pptx or
            pandoc --reference-doc route. Nothing installed → professor chooses:
            install, or ship source-only (degradation ladder).
Phase 2  ARCHITECT   — deck_architect maps the outline to a slide sequence with theme
                       tokens: splits/merges to one idea per slide, dividers, builds,
                       speaker notes carried into the source, slide-count sanity
Phase 3  FIGURES     — figure_maker renders every figure spec as an actual image file
                       + generating code + alt text; [NEEDS PROFESSOR INPUT] figures
                       (own data, lab photos) left as labeled placeholders
Phase 4  RENDER      — renderer builds the deck for real, verifies the output file
                       exists, slide count matches source, and opens it for the
                       professor; then the accessibility pass per
                       references/slide_design_rules.md (font floor, contrast,
                       palette, alt text) — violations flagged, never silently fixed
         🧑 checkpoint: rendered artifact path + accessibility findings + every
            decision made (splits, derived titles, figure choices). Confirmed →
            passport week artifact_refs updated.

handout, restyle, and poster re-enter this workflow at the phase they need: handout is Phase 4 with a layout variant; restyle runs the R-check audit first, then Phases 2–4 on the existing content; poster swaps the slide sequence for a single-canvas layout but keeps figure and render discipline unchanged.

Iron rules

1. Source of truth is the source. The markdown/spec file is the deck of record;

the PDF/PPTX is a build product, rebuildable from source at any time. Edits go into the source and re-render — never into the binary alone.

1. Never fake a render. No installed tool for the chosen route → deliver the

source, the exact install command, and a plain statement of what the build would produce. A claimed render with no verified file on disk is a defect, not a draft.

1. Accessibility minimums are enforced, not advisory (Quality Gate U1 made

executable): 24pt body-text floor for projection, contrast-checked text/background pairs, colorblind-safe palette wherever color carries meaning, alt text in the source for every figure. Violations are flagged with slide numbers; the professor may override with a logged reason — silence is not an option.

1. Theme consistency. Every deck in a course renders against the confirmed theme

spec. A deck drifting from it (ad-hoc colors, off-scale fonts) is flagged at the render checkpoint, not quietly normalized and not quietly shipped.

1. Figures are code. Every generated figure ships with the script that drew it,

stored alongside the image — rebuildable when the data changes, editable when the professor disagrees. Pasted unreproducible images are for professor-supplied material only.

1. Content fidelity. The deck says what the outline/notes say — this skill adds

zero new domain claims at any phase. Where the outline is silent, the slide carries [NEEDS CONTENT: ], never plausible filler; inherited [VERIFY] markers survive into the source untouched.

Outputs

• decks/W_deck.md — deck source, from templates/deck_source_template.md
• decks/W_deck.pdf / .pptx / .html — the verified build product
• decks/figures/W_fig.(png|svg|pdf) + decks/figures/src/W_fig.(py|mmd|tex)
• (theme mode) decks/theme/theme_spec.md + decks/theme/course.css or pptx template notes
• (handout mode) decks/W_handout.pdf
• (restyle mode) decks/restyle_audit.md (R-check report) + rebuilt deck
• (poster mode) decks/poster_.md + rendered poster file
• Updated course_passport.yaml week artifact_refs[] (after confirmation)

References

• references/slide_design_rules.md — the enforced rulebook: assertion-evidence,

density ceilings, legibility table, palette, R-check audit ids

• references/toolchain_guide.md — toolchain decision table, install/build/verify

commands, degradation ladder

• templates/theme_spec_template.md
• templates/deck_source_template.md
• Shared: shared/pedagogy_foundations.md (§7, §9), shared/course_passport_schema.md,

shared/checkpoint_protocol.md, shared/quality_gate_protocol.md

Source & license

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

• Author: YujxZJCN
• Source: YujxZJCN/teaching-skills
• License: MIT

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