Paper Talk: End-to-End Conference Talk Pipeline

Workflow: from a completed paper to a conference-ready talk artifact — slide outline, Beamer source, editable PPTX, speaker notes, full talk script, polished visuals, and assurance checks.

Pipeline target: $ARGUMENTS

Assurance Ladder

The skill takes an explicit — assurance: argument; default is polished.

Phase 4 (assurance checks) is opt-in via — assurance: conference-ready. The lower levels skip claim / citation / anonymity audits, which is correct when content has already been audited at the paper-writing stage.

Hard Invariants

These are non-negotiable across all phases:

1. Original paper is read-only. This workflow consumes the paper directory; it never modifies paper/main.tex or other paper artifacts.
2. Original deck is preserved. /paper-slides produces a baseline deck; /slides-polish writes a _polished versioned copy. The original Beamer + PPTX are never overwritten.
3. Speaker notes are byte-stable. Polish must not change slide.notes_slide content. Phase 4 verifies this.
4. No new content anywhere in the pipeline. All slide text, speaker notes, talk script, Q&A answers, claims, numbers, citations, URLs, author names, affiliations, anonymity placeholders, and experiment results must be either paper-grounded (extracted from PAPER_DIR/ artefacts) or explicitly user-provided. The pipeline never invents content during outline, build, polish, audit, or export. Phase-4 anonymity scan + claim audit verify this end-to-end.
5. No slide reordering. Add / drop / reorder requires explicit user flags.
6. Cross-model independence. Per-page Codex calls in /slides-polish use fresh spawn_agent calls (no send_input). See ../shared-references/reviewer-independence.md.
7. Anonymity fail-closed. If any audit (or any Codex fix proposal) would replace a placeholder with a real title / count / URL, the workflow halts and surfaces the proposal for human review. See ../shared-references/experiment-integrity.md.
8. Style references are guidance, not text source. A — reference: PDF or — style: preset informs visual weight and structural rhythm; never copy prose, examples, slide titles, or speaker-note text from the reference.
9. Final report cannot be conference-ready unless required audits pass. Phase 6 verifies and downgrades verdict if audits fail.
10. reasoning_effort: xhigh is invariant across all effort levels for any Codex call invoked by sub-skills.

Constants

• PAPER_DIR = paper/ — Source paper directory. Override via positional argument.
• OUTPUT_DIR = slides/ — Where the deck artefacts live.
• STATE_DIR = .aris/paper-talk/ — Workflow state, audit logs, final report.
• TALK_TYPE = spotlight — Default talk format. Inherited by /paper-slides.
• TALK_MINUTES = 15 — Default duration. Inherited by /paper-slides.
• VENUE = NeurIPS — Default venue (used by /paper-slides color schemes when — style is not passed).
• ASPECT_RATIO = 16:9 — Inherited by /paper-slides.
• STYLE_PRESET — generic if not passed; why-rf and venue presets supported by /slides-polish.
• REFERENCE_VISUAL — Required when assurance ≥ polished. The Beamer compile of this talk is an acceptable self-reference; an external academic talk PDF is preferred when the user wants visual alignment beyond defaults.
• AUTO_PROCEED = false — Each major phase pauses for user approval. Set true only when explicitly requested.

Inputs

Discovered from $ARGUMENTS and the project directory:

1. PAPER_DIR/ — compiled paper (main.tex + main.pdf). The paper must already be in good shape; this workflow does not write the paper.
2. PAPER_DIR/sections/*.tex — section sources for content extraction.
3. PAPER_DIR/figures/ — figures available for slide reuse.
4. (optional) slides/SLIDE_OUTLINE.md — pre-existing outline (resume mode); skips Phase 1 generation.
5. (optional) — reference: <pdf> — visual anchor for /slides-polish. If absent and the assurance level requires polish, the workflow uses the Beamer self-compile as reference.
6. (optional) — talk_type, — minutes, — style, — effort — see Constants.

Output Layout

File names match /paper-slides's emit contract — this workflow is a non-renaming consumer.

slides/
├── SLIDE_OUTLINE.md                # Phase-1 outline (claim-first per slide)
├── main.tex                        # Beamer source (from /paper-slides)
├── main.pdf                        # compiled Beamer
├── presentation.pptx               # editable PPTX (from /paper-slides; emit name fixed by /paper-slides)
├── presentation_pre_polish.pptx    # snapshot before /slides-polish
├── presentation_polished.pptx      # /slides-polish output (when assurance ≥ polished)
├── presentation_polished.pdf       # rendered (LibreOffice or user-export)
├── speaker_notes.md                # per-slide notes (from /paper-slides)
├── TALK_SCRIPT.md                  # full word-for-word talk script + Q&A (from /paper-slides)
└── assets/                         # per-slide PNG previews

.aris/paper-talk/
├── PIPELINE_STATE.json             # phase pointer, status, timestamps
├── FINAL_REPORT.md                 # human-readable summary at end
├── audit-input/                    # Phase-4 staging copies of slide text + notes + script (so /paper-claim-audit and /citation-audit can run on slide content as a synthetic "paper")
│   ├── main.tex                    # \input{sections/slide_text.tex} \input{sections/notes.tex} \input{sections/script.tex}
│   ├── sections/
│   │   ├── slide_text.tex          # all visible slide bullets/titles/callouts as \section{Slide K}
│   │   ├── notes.tex               # speaker_notes.md → LaTeX, one \section per slide
│   │   └── script.tex              # TALK_SCRIPT.md → LaTeX, one \section per slide
│   ├── references.bib → ../../../paper/references.bib   # symlink to source paper bib for /citation-audit
│   ├── results/ → ../../../paper/results/                # symlink — claim audit needs real evidence
│   └── figures/ → ../../../paper/figures/                # symlink — citation audit may reference figure captions
└── audits/
    ├── slide_claim_audit.json      # 6-state verdict per claim (PASS/WARN/FAIL/NOT_APPLICABLE/BLOCKED/ERROR)
    ├── citation_audit.json         # citation existence / metadata
    ├── anonymity_scan.json         # placeholder discipline check
    └── export_integrity.json       # page-count / aspect / blank-slide / notes-preserved

The audit JSON files follow the shared 6-state schema; see ../shared-references/assurance-contract.md.

Workflow

Phase 0: Setup

1. Validate paper directory: ls $PAPER_DIR/main.tex $PAPER_DIR/main.pdf. If absent → halt and ask user to point to the compiled paper.
2. Check prerequisites:
   • LaTeX: which xelatex pdflatex latexmk
   • PPTX rendering: which soffice (LibreOffice headless) — required for Phase 4 export integrity check; otherwise prompt user to export PDF manually.
   • PDF tools: which pdfinfo pdftoppm (poppler) — required for /slides-polish PNG rendering.
   • Codex MCP availability.
   • python-pptx (python3 -c 'import pptx').
3. Resolve overrides from $ARGUMENTS: talk_type, minutes, assurance, reference, style, effort.
4. State init: write .aris/paper-talk/PIPELINE_STATE.json with phase: 0, timestamp, all resolved overrides.
5. Resume mode: if slides/SLIDE_OUTLINE.md exists and PIPELINE_STATE.json shows