Creating a Deck

Do not explore the codebase for routine deck creation. Use the app actions and linked skills. This does not override the active design system, Creative Context, reference deck, or source material that the app already provides.

Workflow

1. Read the creative-context skill and retrieve factual evidence separately from presentation structure. Respect contextMode: "off".
2. Unless the user named a reference deck or design system, call get-workspace-defaults and use what it returns. See "Workspace Defaults".
3. Plan the slides and write a compact deck brief: audience, thesis, one message per slide, visual direction, and the deck-level theme contract.
4. Call create-deck --title "..." --slides '[]' with a concise, specific title derived from the user's request and source material. The action opens the new empty deck through application state. Never use Untitled Deck or another placeholder title for a generated deck.
5. If the connected browser does not consume the navigation command, call navigate with the new deck id.
6. Add every generated slide with add-slide in slide order, waiting for each result so each slide preserves its per-slide Creative Context provenance. After the first slide, read it back with get-deck using its returned slideId and compact=false to verify the visual contract before continuing.

When speaker notes are requested, put presenter-only text in each slide's notes field on create-deck or add-slide; keep it out of the slide HTML. Preserve existing notes when editing or importing a source deck.

When the UI has already created the empty deck, keep its id and rename it before adding the first slide. Call patch-deck with a patch-deck-fields operation whose fields.title is the generated title. Do not leave the pre-created deck's placeholder title in place. Include only title in that operation's fields; omit all other optional fields.

Follow the creative-context reuse ladder before inventing a slide language: reuse an approved native template unchanged, compose approved pieces, lightly adapt a real approved example, generate from narrowly retrieved references, then go net-new only when the relevant corpus is empty. Retrieval is a separate step from generation. Persist the immutable contextPackId and concise reuse labels with the deck's generation provenance; never infer provenance later from rendered slide HTML.

Direction and source checkpoint

Before authoring slide HTML, make a compact deck brief with the audience, job, narrative thesis, one-sentence visual direction, active design-system tokens, reference-deck composition pattern, image treatment, and known fit risks. The linked Agent-Native design system controls tokens, typography, spacing, imagery, and slide chrome. Impeccable-inspired advice about hierarchy, subtraction, contrast, rhythm, and polish is a review lens, not a competing theme. If the request is open-ended and no approved direction exists, ask one targeted guided question or present a bounded choice before writing; do not silently pick a new brand language.

Before the first slide, lock a deck-level visual contract: background family, text and surface roles, accent treatment, heading/body type pairing, spacing scale, radius, and image treatment. With a linked system, derive the contract from its hydrated tokens. Without one, choose a subject-appropriate direction and repeat the same semantic --deck-* values on every slide wrapper. Vary composition and information hierarchy, not the canvas, font system, or palette. Alternating light and dark slides are a theme failure unless the user explicitly asks for that structure.

When the source is a transcript or meeting notes, extract the audience's terminology, goals, objections, decisions, owners, dates, metrics, and open questions before outlining. Preserve exact names, numbers, dates, and requested quotes; retain speaker/source attribution; distinguish quotation, paraphrase, inference, and unresolved claim. Do not invent connective claims to make the story smoother. Keep factual evidence separate from visual references and record the source/version identifiers in provenance when available.

When creative context is available, pass the pre-generation search result's contextPackId to create-deck, pass deck-wide reuseLabels, and add creativeContextReuseLabels to each slide that reused a specific item/version. Do not omit these fields and let the final write action search after the HTML has already been authored; that would fabricate influence. With an empty library, omit them. With Library mode Off, omit them and create normally. before adding the next slide

Do not create multiple independent writes in parallel for the same deck. Do not spawn sub-agents to write into the same deck at the same time. Every newly generated slide must use add-slide; reserve patch-deck for deck fields, existing-slide edits, ordering, or source-preserving work. Sub-agents may research or draft slide copy, but one writer owns every deck mutation so the editor stays stable and the user can watch progress.

Reference Decks

The user can pick an existing deck as a style reference when starting a new one. When they do, a ## Reference Deck block is already in your context holding one worked HTML example per layout.

Treat it as a pattern library, not an outline. The most common failure here is walking the reference deck slide by slide and swapping in new copy, which produces a deck with the wrong shape for its own content. Instead:

1. Plan the new deck from the user's request alone — story, slide count, order.
2. For each slide you decided to write, pick the pattern that fits that content.
3. Reuse a pattern as often as the content warrants, or never.
4. When nothing fits, compose a new slide from the same type scale, spacing, color, and markup conventions rather than bending content to a near-miss.

The block deliberately omits the reference deck's slide sequence. Call get-deck --id <reference deck id> --compact false only if you need full slide HTML to see how that deck handled a case the patterns do not cover.

A reference deck and a design system are independent: the design system wins on tokens (color, type, spacing, imagery, and slide defaults), the reference deck wins on slide-level composition and markup idiom. Apply both when both are present. Generic templates in this skill are fallback patterns only. Never let a reference screenshot or deck silently transfer its brand tokens.

Decks the user has starred are their intended reference decks. list-decks reports starred so you can offer them when the user asks for something "like our usual deck".

Attached Reference Documents

A PDF, PPTX, or DOCX attached to a new-deck prompt is read before your run starts. Its extracted content and, for a PDF, its measured visual language — page proportions, painted backgrounds, the ranked type scale with families, sizes, weights and colors, median text margins, paragraph alignment — arrive as an ## Attached Reference Documents block.

That block is the reference. Do not call import-file for a file listed there, and never generate as if the attachment were missing: if the file could not be read, the run would have been stopped before it reached you, so a file you can see in that block was read successfully.

When the user attached the file as a visual or style reference, match the measured type scale, weights, colors, alignment, and margins. A deck generated from a style reference must not come out looking like one generated without it. Structure and wording still come from the user's request, not from the reference's own page order.

The fallback visual language in this skill applies only when no reference document, reference deck, or design system is present.

Workspace Defaults

A workspace admin can flag one deck and one design system as the workspace default, so a bare "make a deck about X" still comes out on brand. When the user did not name a reference deck or design system, call get-workspace-defaults before planning slides.

• referenceDeck — call get-deck-reference-context --id <id> and treat the result exactly like a user-picked reference deck.
• designSystem — pass its id as designSystemId to create-deck, unless the caller already has a personal default, which create-deck applies on its own.
• Either field can come back { unavailable: true }. That means the default exists but this user cannot open it, which is a misconfiguration, not an absent default. Generate without it and tell the user their workspace default is not shared with them, rather than silently producing an off-brand deck.

An explicit request always wins over the workspace default. Do not re-apply a workspace default to an existing deck the user is editing.

If the user provides a Google Docs URL as source material, call import-google-doc --url <url> first and build from the returned text. If the action cannot read a private document, the user can connect Google Docs and choose the file through the picker, or share the Doc with the configured service account. Relay the action's exact access instructions instead of generating from the URL alone.

pnpm action create-deck --title "My Deck" --slides '[]'

create-deck also writes the navigation command. If the connected browser did not consume it, navigate explicitly:

pnpm action navigate --deckId=<id from create-deck output>

Then add slides one by one:

pnpm action add-slide --deckId=<id> --layout title --content "..."
pnpm action add-slide --deckId=<id> --layout content --content "..."

Slide Wrapper

Every slide's content must use the semantic --deck-* contract on its outer div. Which of the two forms you use depends on whether a design system is linked.

A design system is linked. Inherit the renderer's hydrated variables (--ds-bg, --ds-text, --ds-text-muted, --ds-accent, --ds-surface, --ds-heading-font, --ds-body-font, --ds-radius) through the contract rather than copying values into individual elements:

<div class="fmd-slide" style="--deck-bg: var(--ds-bg); --deck-ink: var(--ds-text); --deck-muted: var(--ds-text-muted); --deck-accent: var(--ds-accent); --deck-surface: var(--ds-surface); --deck-heading-font: var(--ds-heading-font); --deck-body-font: var(--ds-body-font); --deck-radius: var(--ds-radius); background: var(--deck-bg); color: var(--deck-ink); padding: 64px 80px; display: flex; flex-direction: column; justify-content: flex-start; font-family: var(--deck-body-font);">
  <!-- slide content here -->
</div>

No design system is linked. There is no house style to fall back to, and the renderer publishes no --ds-* tokens beyond the slide's own background. Derive a contract from the deck's subject and write it as literal values:

<div class="fmd-slide" style="--deck-bg: #10261C; --deck-ink: #F2EFE6; --deck-muted: #A8B8AC; --deck-accent: #7FB069; --deck-surface: rgba(255,255,255,0.05); --deck-heading-font: 'Fraunces', Georgia, serif; --deck-body-font: 'Inter', sans-serif; --deck-radius: 4px; background: var(--deck-bg); color: var(--deck-ink); padding: 64px 80px; display: flex; flex-direction: column; justify-content: flex-start; font-family: var(--deck-body-font);">
  <!-- slide content here -->
</div>

That example is a nature-related deck, so colors match the topic of deck. Pick the values once, before the first slide, and repeat the identical contract on every wrapper.

Inheriting when nothing is linked is the failure mode to avoid: a var(--ds-accent, currentColor) reference on an unlinked deck silently resolves to a browser default, so the deck reads as unstyled rather than as the direction you chose. Never import a stock presentation palette, font, or component language as a substitute for choosing.

Fit budget

The canvas is fixed at its aspect-ratio dimensions. With the standard 16:9 canvas (960x540) and padding: 64px 80px, the usable content area is only 800x412px. Treat that as a hard budget for the main flow: use at most two title lines, three short bullets or cards, and two or three short items per column. Split dense source material across slides instead of shrinking it into a dense stack. Keep body text at or above 16px. Never hide overflow with zoom, transform: scale(), clipping, or scroll overflow. A later structural repair may reduce the slide's explicit padding, and that padding must remain intact when the saved HTML is rendered.

Build an intentional composition beyond a text dump: use a title block, two-column split, metric treatment, rule, callout, visual placeholder, or simple diagram where it fits the message. Keep the canvas stable across the deck, use accents only for hierarchy or meaning, and do not add decorative cards, gradients, fake logos, or shapes without a semantic role.

Bounded visual QA

Before calling the deck complete, render every changed slide at its canonical aspect-ratio dimensions and make one batched review pass. Check hierarchy and source fidelity, overflow or clipping, contrast, minimum readable text, placeholder remnants, broken or missing images, asset fit, and preserved data-slide-object-id values. Fix the findings in one correction pass and recheck. Then, as the last step before the final response, call audit-contrast for the deck and follow the Contrast section of slide-editing; never judge contrast by eye or from hex values. Do not claim full-deck or pixel-perfect fidelity unless the whole deck was rendered and compared.

Ready-to-Use Templates

Copy and fill in the bracketed values. [WRAPPER STYLE] stands for the deck contract chosen in "Slide Wrapper" - the inherited var(--ds-*) form when a system is linked, the literal form when none is. It is identical on every slide. Inside the slide, read the contract directly (var(--deck-accent)), not through another layer of fallbacks; the wrapper has already defined every role.

Title Slide

<div class="fmd-slide" style="[WRAPPER STYLE] justify-content: center; align-items: flex-start; gap: 18px;">
  <div style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: 700; letter-spacing: 0.12em; text-transform: uppercase; color: var(--deck-accent);">[LABEL OR DATE]</div>
  <h1 style="font-size: 56px; font-weight: 750; color: var(--deck-ink); font-family: var(--deck-heading-font); line-height: 1.05; letter-spacing: -0.04em; margin: 0; max-width: 760px;">[TITLE]</h1>
  <p style="font-size: 20px; color: var(--deck-muted); margin: 4px 0 0;">[SUBTITLE OR PRESENTER]</p>
</div>

Content or Two-Column Slide

<div class="fmd-slide" style="[WRAPPER STYLE] justify-content: flex-start; gap: 18px;">
  <div style="font-size: 13px; font-weight: 700; letter-spacing: 0.1em; text-transform: uppercase; color: var(--deck-accent);">[SECTION LABEL]</div>
  <h2 style="font-size: 34px; font-weight: 750; color: var(--deck-ink); font-family: var(--deck-heading-font); line-height: 1.12; letter-spacing: -0.03em; margin: 0 0 18px;">[SLIDE HEADING]</h2>
  <div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 1fr 1fr; gap: 24px; align-items: start;">
    <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; gap: 14px;">
      <div style="border-left: 3px solid var(--deck-accent); padding: 12px 16px; background: var(--deck-surface); border-radius: var(--deck-radius); font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.4;">[KEY POINT]</div>
      <div style="border-left: 3px solid var(--deck-accent); padding: 12px 16px; background: var(--deck-surface); border-radius: var(--deck-radius); font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.4;">[KEY POINT]</div>
    </div>
    <div class="fmd-img-placeholder" style="min-height: 220px; border-radius: var(--deck-radius);">[VISUAL OR IMAGE DESCRIPTION]</div>
  </div>
</div>

Use the same wrapper and tokens for section, statement, metrics, and closing slides, changing only the composition. An image placeholder, metric row, short rule, or callout should support the message, not fill empty space.

Image Placeholders

When a slide needs a visual, use this div. It renders as a styled placeholder and can later be replaced with a generated image:

<div class="fmd-img-placeholder" style="width: 100%; min-height: 220px; border-radius: var(--deck-radius);">[Description of what image should show]</div>

Bulk Replacement Only

Use a non-empty create-deck --slides '[...]' payload only for imports or an intentional atomic bulk replacement. For normal AI-generated decks, use the empty-deck workflow above: sequential add-slide calls for every generated slide.

For a bulk replacement, pass the same fully styled HTML templates in the slides array. After creating, navigate to the deck:

pnpm action navigate --deckId=<id>