paper-slides

Paper Slides: From Paper to Conference Talk

Generate conference presentation slides from: $ARGUMENTS

Context

This skill runs after Workflow 3 (/paper-writing). It takes a compiled paper and generates a presentation slide deck for conference oral talks, spotlight presentations, or poster lightning talks.

Unlike posters (single page, visual-first), slides tell a temporal story: each slide builds on the previous one, with progressive revelation of the research narrative. A good talk makes the audience understand why this matters before showing what was done.

Constants

• VENUE = NeurIPS — Target venue, determines color scheme. Supported: NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, AAAI, ACL, EMNLP, CVPR, ECCV, GENERIC. Override via argument.
• TALK_TYPE = spotlight — Talk format. Options: oral (15-20 min), spotlight (5-8 min), poster-talk (3-5 min), invited (30-45 min). Determines slide count and content depth.
• TALK_MINUTES = 15 — Talk duration in minutes. Auto-adjusts slide count (~1 slide/minute for oral, ~1.5 slides/minute for spotlight). Override explicitly if needed.
• ASPECT_RATIO = 16:9 — Slide aspect ratio. Options: 16:9 (default, modern projectors), 4:3 (legacy).
• SPEAKER_NOTES = true — Generate \note{} blocks in beamer and corresponding PPTX notes. Set false for clean slides without notes.
• PAPER_DIR = paper/ — Directory containing the compiled paper.
• OUTPUT_DIR = slides/ — Output directory for all slide files.
• REVIEWER_MODEL = gpt-5.5 — Model used via Codex MCP for slide review.
• AUTO_PROCEED = false — At each checkpoint, always wait for explicit user confirmation.
• COMPILER = latexmk — LaTeX build tool.
• ENGINE = pdflatex — LaTeX engine. Use xelatex for CJK text.

💡 Override: /paper-slides "paper/" — talk_type: oral, venue: ICML, minutes: 20, aspect: 4:3

Talk Type → Slide Count

| Talk Type | Duration | Slides | Content Depth | |-----------|----------|:------:|---------------| | poster-talk | 3-5 min | 5-8 | Problem + 1 method slide + 1 result + conclusion | | spotlight | 5-8 min | 8-12 | Problem + 2 method + 2 results + conclusion | | oral | 15-20 min | 15-22 | Full story with motivation, method detail, experiments, analysis | | invited | 30-45 min | 25-40 | Comprehensive: background, related work, deep method, extensive results, discussion |

Venue Color Schemes

Same as /paper-poster:

| Venue | Primary | Accent | Background | Text | |-------|---------|--------|------------|------| | NeurIPS | #8B5CF6 | #2563EB | #FFFFFF | #1E1E1E | | ICML | #DC2626 | #1D4ED8 | #FFFFFF | #1E1E1E | | ICLR | #059669 | #0284C7 | #FFFFFF | #1E1E1E | | CVPR | #2563EB | #7C3AED | #FFFFFF | #1E1E1E | | GENERIC | #334155 | #2563EB | #FFFFFF | #1E1E1E |

State Persistence (Compact Recovery)

Persist state to slides/SLIDES_STATE.json after each phase:

{
  "phase": 3,
  "venue": "NeurIPS",
  "talk_type": "spotlight",
  "slide_count": 10,
  "codex_thread_id": "019cfcf4-...",
  "status": "in_progress",
  "timestamp": "2026-03-18T15:00:00"
}

On startup: if SLIDES_STATE.json exists with "status": "in_progress" and within 24h → resume. Otherwise → fresh start.

Workflow

Phase 0: Input Validation & Setup

1. Check prerequisites:

``bash which pdflatex && which latexmk ``

1. Verify paper exists:

``bash ls $PAPER_DIR/main.tex || ls $PAPER_DIR/main.pdf ls $PAPER_DIR/sections/*.tex ls $PAPER_DIR/figures/ ``

1. Backup existing slides: if slides/ exists, copy to slides-backup-{timestamp}/

1. Create output directory: mkdir -p slides/figures

1. Detect CJK: if paper contains Chinese/Japanese/Korean, set ENGINE to xelatex

1. Determine slide count: from TALK_TYPE and TALK_MINUTES using the table above

1. Check for resume: read slides/SLIDES_STATE.json if it exists

State: Write SLIDES_STATE.json with phase: 0.

Phase 1: Content Extraction & Slide Outline

Read paper/sections/*.tex and build a slide-by-slide outline.

Slide template by talk type:

Oral (15-22 slides)

| Slide | Purpose | Content Source | Figure? | |:-----:|---------|----------------|:-------:| | 1 | Title | Paper metadata | No | | 2 | Outline | Section headers | No | | 3-4 | Motivation & Problem | Introduction | Optional | | 5 | Key Insight | Introduction (contribution) | No | | 6-9 | Method | Method section | Yes (hero figure) | | 10-14 | Results | Experiments | Yes (per slide) | | 15-16 | Analysis / Ablations | Experiments | Yes | | 17 | Limitations | Conclusion | No | | 18 | Conclusion / Takeaway | Conclusion | No | | 19 | Thank You + QR | — | QR code |

Spotlight (8-12 slides)

| Slide | Purpose | Content Source | Figure? | |:-----:|---------|----------------|:-------:| | 1 | Title | Paper metadata | No | | 2-3 | Problem + Why It Matters | Introduction | Optional | | 4 | Key Insight | Contribution | No | | 5-6 | Method | Method (condensed) | Yes (hero) | | 7-9 | Results | Key results only | Yes | | 10 | Takeaway | Conclusion | No | | 11 | Thank You + QR | — | QR code |

Poster-talk (5-8 slides)

| Slide | Purpose | Content Source | Figure? | |:-----:|---------|----------------|:-------:| | 1 | Title | Paper metadata | No | | 2 | Problem | Introduction (1 slide) | No | | 3 | Method | Method (1 slide) | Yes | | 4-5 | Results | Key result only | Yes | | 6 | Takeaway + QR | Conclusion | QR |

For each slide, specify:

• Title (max 8 words)
• 3-5 bullet points (max 8 words each)
• Figure reference (if any) from paper/figures/
• Speaker note (2-3 sentences of what to say)
• Time allocation (in seconds)

Output: slides/SLIDE_OUTLINE.md

🚦 Checkpoint:

📊 Slide outline ready:
- Talk type: [TALK_TYPE] ([TALK_MINUTES] min)
- Slide count: [N] slides
- Figures used: [N] from paper/figures/
- Time budget: [breakdown]

Slide-by-slide outline:
1. [Title slide]
2. [Motivation — 1.5 min]
3. [Problem statement — 1 min]
...

Proceed to drafting? Or adjust the outline?

⛔ STOP HERE and wait for user response. This is the most critical checkpoint — the outline determines the entire talk flow.

Options:

• "go" → proceed to Phase 2
• adjustments (e.g., "merge slides 3-4", "add a demo slide", "cut the ablation") → revise
• "stop" → save to slides/SLIDE_OUTLINE.md

State: Write SLIDES_STATE.json with phase: 1.

Phase 2: Slide-by-Slide Content Drafting

For each slide in the outline, draft the actual content.

Presentation rules (enforced strictly):

| Rule | Rationale | |------|-----------| | One message per slide | If a slide has two ideas, split it | | Max 6 lines per slide | More than 6 lines = wall of text | | Max 8 words per line | Audience reads, not listens, if text is long | | Sentence fragments, not sentences | "Improves F1 by 3.2%" not "Our method improves the F1 score by 3.2 percentage points" | | Figure slides: figure ≥60% area | The figure IS the content; bullets are annotations | | Bold key numbers | "Achieves 94.3% accuracy" | | Progressive disclosure | Use \pause or \onslide for complex slides | | No Related Work slide | Unless invited talk (30+ min) |

For each slide, produce:

1. \frametitle{}
2. Content (itemize or figure + caption)
3. \note{} with speaker text (if SPEAKER_NOTES=true)

Phase 3: Generate Slides LaTeX

Create slides/main.tex using beamer.

Template structure:

\documentclass[aspectratio=169]{beamer}

% Venue theme
\usepackage{xcolor}
\definecolor{primary}{HTML}{VENUE_PRIMARY}
\definecolor{accent}{HTML}{VENUE_ACCENT}

% Clean theme
\usetheme{default}
\usecolortheme{default}
\setbeamercolor{frametitle}{fg=primary}
\setbeamercolor{title}{fg=primary}
\setbeamercolor{structure}{fg=accent}
\setbeamercolor{itemize item}{fg=primary}
\setbeamercolor{itemize subitem}{fg=accent}