Deck Design PDF — Operational Playbook

What This Skill Does

• Input: a deck brief + any structured data the user provides.
• Output: a PDF file — pixel-perfect slides rendered from HTML/CSS via Playwright. Not editable in PowerPoint. This is the high-fidelity, print-ready format.

When to use this vs deck-design-ppt

What the web stack unlocks (beyond pptx)

• CSS Grid and Flexbox — responsive layouts instead of coordinate math
• Google Fonts with optical sizing and variable weights
• Font Awesome 6 icons inline with text
• Gradient backgrounds, box shadows, rounded corners, opacity
• ECharts 5 (SVG renderer) — 21 chart types: bar, line, pie, scatter, waterfall, gauge, sankey, treemap, radar, funnel, heatmap, and more
• Tailwind utility classes — rapid, consistent styling

Phase 1 — Understand and Route

1. Read the room

Before asking the user anything, scan the working directory for artifacts that establish context — briefs, consultant storyboards (*-ghost.md, *-outline.md), data files, brand specs, existing build scripts. Read what's there and form a working hypothesis about what this deck needs: objective, audience, tone, density, and data.

Then ask only for what's genuinely ambiguous and would change the deck's argument or audience calibration. Frame questions as choices, not open fields: "The data suggests a Bain decision-first structure — does that fit, or is this more of an internal working session?" One sharp question beats five vague ones. Maximum 1–3 questions; zero is fine if the artifacts are clear.

2. Classify the deck

This determines how deep the planning phase goes. Two paths:

Consultant handoff — if a storyboard from the consultant skill already exists (governing thought, pillars, action titles, content descriptions), the argument layer is done. Skip ghost deck construction entirely. Validate the argument (run the helicopter test on the titles), then proceed to the production outline.

3. Pick style and density

Style:

The fonts above are vendored locally for the default palettes. The agent is not limited to these — any Google Font can be loaded via a <link> tag in headExtra when the brief calls for a different typeface.

Density:

Show deck vs. working deck — infer from audience and objective, don't ask. "Board presentation" → tier: 'presentation' (body ≥15pt, room-safe). "Diligence data room" → tier: 'document' (body ≥12pt, dense but legible). The tier shifts ALL text tokens automatically.

For L2+ consulting decks, apply firm-specific conventions from firm-dna.md. For density adaptation rules, see density-adaptation.md.

Phase 1.5 — Ghost Deck

Before writing any HTML, build the ghost deck — the narrative skeleton that precedes all visualization. Charts and code are execution. The ghost deck is the thinking.

The ghost deck process produces two artifacts:

• {slug}-ghost.md — the argument layer: governing thought, action titles, exhibit types. A senior reviewer can approve this without knowing CSS.
• {slug}-outline.md — the execution layer: ghost deck + density tiers, layout geometry, chart dimensions, column alignment. This is what the build phase reads.

Process management. Building a ghost deck requires populating multiple interdependent layers and passing quality gates that may trigger backtracking. Use your task management tools to track which layers are complete, which gates have passed, and what needs revisiting. Externalize this state — don't try to hold it all in one pass.

Universal quality gates

These apply to every deck — consulting, startup, board update, conference talk. They are not consulting methodology; they are good deck design.

Start from the governing thought — one sentence that states the deck's answer. Build pillars that support it. Write action titles for every slide before you touch any charts. Read the titles in sequence — if they don't tell a complete story, the problem is in the pillars, not the titles. Only assign exhibits once the argument holds. Cut any slide that isn't load-bearing.

What must exist in every ghost deck:

Common deck patterns. For non-consulting decks, chart-taxonomy.md § Deck Archetypes provides narrative arcs and exhibit mixes for common formats — investor/roadshow (Problem → Solution → Traction → Market → Model → Team → Ask), board updates (Headlines → KPIs → Progress → Risks → Decisions), due diligence memos, transformation roadmaps, and more. Use these as starting points for the slide sequence, then write action titles and apply the quality gates above. Don't force a pattern that doesn't fit the brief — adapt or combine as the argument requires.

Backtracking, not patching. If the helicopter test fails, the problem is upstream — the pillars don't support the governing thought, or the titles are topic labels instead of conclusions. Go back to where the argument breaks. Don't patch titles to paper over a structural gap.

When the brief supports multiple valid governing thoughts — surface the options and let the user choose before proceeding. Otherwise, commit to the strongest hypothesis and work forward.

Consulting path

For MBB engagements and strategy consulting,