Build a Deck

What it does

Chains six skills into one path from blank page to a deck you can present: define the point, get the sequence right, sharpen each slide, turn data into charts, polish for consistency and design, then handle export and the words that open and close the talk. Each step runs on the output of the one before it, so you never start a slide from nothing.

What you need

• An AI chat (any major one). One that can render slides or artifacts is nice for previewing, but the whole pipeline works as plain text you build in your own tool.
• Your normal slide tool for the final file.
• The six skills: Deck Foundation, Deck Story Order, One Point Per Slide, The Slide Chart, Deck Polish Pass, Deck Delivery.

The workflow

1. Deck Foundation — start here, always. Answer its clarifying questions specifically; that's what makes the deck yours instead of generic. Out comes your first full draft: title, narrative arc, key points, a real call to action.
2. Deck Story Order — feed it just your slide titles plus one line each. It audits the flow as if watching live and proposes a better sequence with reasoning. Fix the order before you polish anything — good slides in the wrong order still fail.
3. One Point Per Slide — run this on every slide over ~20 words of body text. It finds the single thing the slide must land, rewrites around it, and moves the rest to your speaker notes.
4. The Slide Chart — for any slide with real numbers, turn the table into one chart with a plain-language takeaway headline. One chart, one point, one slide.
5. Deck Polish Pass — run once on the whole draft. It catches consistency drift (fonts, colours, wording) and design weakness (clutter, weak hierarchy) and hands back a fix list ordered by impact. Do the top fixes first.
6. Deck Delivery — get it into your slide tool (or a clean outline to rebuild from), and write the opening line and closing line that carry the talk. Say them out loud before you accept them.

Maintenance habits

• Keep step 1's answers. Next deck, you reuse your audience and goal framing instead of redefining it from scratch.
• Save your best Polish Pass fix lists — the same drift tends to recur, and you learn to avoid it in the draft.
• Trust the room over the model: if a reorder or a cut feels wrong in your gut, it can defend both options, but you're the one who knows the audience.
• Don't skip Foundation to save time. Every later step assumes a defined point; without one they just tidy a deck that was never aimed anywhere.