---
name: visual-deck
description: "Create visually stunning presentations and design artifacts by combining design philosophy with disciplined execution. Use when the task involves creating slide decks, visual art, posters, or any presentation that demands both artistic vision and professional output. Supports both PPTX export and PNG/PDF canvas output."
---

# Visual Deck Skill

Create museum-quality visual presentations and design artifacts. This skill fuses design philosophy with production-ready execution — think like an artist, build like an engineer.

## Core Philosophy

- **Philosophy First**: Every great visual starts with a design worldview, not a template
- **Craftsmanship Matters**: The final work must look meticulously crafted, as if displayed in a museum
- **Visual Over Verbal**: Ideas communicate through space, form, color, and composition — not paragraphs
- **Tool Mastery**: Use the right tools (canvas for art, PptxGenJS for slides) for the right output
- **1+1>2**: The intersection of artistic vision and technical precision produces better results than either alone

## When to Use

- Creating presentation slide decks that need strong visual impact
- Designing visual art, posters, or static pieces
- Building branded presentations with custom aesthetics
- Any task where the output must feel deliberate, premium, and current

## The Complete Workflow

### Phase 1: Design Philosophy Creation (from canvas-design)

Before creating anything, establish a visual philosophy:

1. **Name the movement** (1-2 words): "Brutalist Joy" / "Chromatic Silence" / "Metabolist Dreams"

2. **Articulate the philosophy** (4-6 paragraphs):
   - Space and form
   - Color and material
   - Scale and rhythm
   - Composition and balance
   - Visual hierarchy

3. **Critical Guidelines**:
   - Avoid redundancy — each design aspect mentioned once
   - Emphasize craftsmanship repeatedly — "meticulously crafted," "master-level execution"
   - Leave creative space for interpretive choices
   - The philosophy must guide visual expression, not text

4. **Essential Principles**:
   - **VISUAL PHILOSOPHY**: Create an aesthetic worldview
   - **MINIMAL TEXT**: Text is sparse, essential-only, integrated as visual element
   - **SPATIAL EXPRESSION**: Ideas communicate through space, form, color, composition
   - **ARTISTIC FREEDOM**: The next step interprets the philosophy visually
   - **PURE DESIGN**: Making ART OBJECTS, not documents with decoration
   - **EXPERT CRAFTSMANSHIP**: Final work must look labored over with care

### Phase 2: Canvas Creation (from canvas-design)

Express the philosophy visually:

1. **Deduce the subtle reference**: Identify the conceptual thread from the original request — refined, sophisticated, not literal

2. **Create the canvas**:
   - Use the design philosophy as foundation
   - Create one single page, highly visual, design-forward output
   - Use repeating patterns and perfect shapes
   - Treat the abstract philosophical design as a scientific bible
   - Dense accumulation of marks, repeated elements, layered patterns
   - Sparse, clinical typography and systematic reference markers
   - Limited color palette, intentional and cohesive
   - Embrace analytical visual language to express human experience

3. **Text as contextual element**:
   - Always minimal and visual-first
   - Context guides scale: whisper-quiet labels or bold typographic gestures
   - Font should be thin and design-forward
   - Search the `./canvas-fonts` directory for appropriate fonts
   - Typography should be part of the art itself

4. **Quality standards**:
   - Nothing overlaps
   - Nothing falls off the page
   - Every element has breathing room and clear separation
   - Composition, spacing, color choices, typography — everything screams expertise
   - Looks like it took countless hours by someone at the top of their field

5. **Final refinement**:
   - Take a second pass
   - Avoid adding more graphics; refine what exists
   - Make the existing composition more cohesive
   - Ask: "How can I make what's already here more of a piece of art?"

**Output**: Design philosophy as `.md` + Canvas as `.pdf` or `.png`

### Phase 3: Presentation Export (from slides) — Optional

When the canvas needs to become a slide deck:

1. **Inspect the request**: Determine if creating new deck, recreating, or editing

2. **Set slide size**: Default to 16:9 (`LAYOUT_WIDE`) unless specified otherwise

3. **Copy bundled resources**:
   - Copy `assets/pptxgenjs_helpers/` into working directory
   - Import helpers locally instead of reimplementing

4. **Build the deck in JavaScript**:
   - Explicit theme font, stable spacing
   - Editable PowerPoint-native elements when practical
   - Apply the design philosophy's color palette and typography choices

5. **Run validation scripts**:
   ```bash
   # Render slides to PNGs for review
   python3 scripts/render_slides.py deck.pptx --output_dir rendered

   # Build a montage for quick scanning
   python3 scripts/create_montage.py --input_dir rendered --output_file montage.png

   # Check for overflow
   python3 scripts/slides_test.py deck.pptx

   # Detect missing or substituted fonts
   python3 scripts/detect_font.py deck.pptx --json
   ```

6. **Deliver**: `.pptx`, authoring `.js`, and any generated assets

## Bundled Resources

### Scripts (from slides)
- `scripts/render_slides.py`: Rasterize `.pptx` or `.pdf` to per-slide PNGs
- `scripts/slides_test.py`: Detect content overflow
- `scripts/create_montage.py`: Build contact-sheet montage
- `scripts/detect_font.py`: Report missing/substituted fonts
- `scripts/ensure_raster_image.py`: Convert SVG/EMF/HEIC to PNGs

### Assets
- `assets/pptxgenjs_helpers/`: PptxGenJS helper library (code.js, image.js, layout.js, etc.)
- `assets/slides-small.svg`: Small icon
- `assets/slides.png`: Large icon

### Fonts (from canvas-design)
- `canvas-fonts/`: 60+ design-forward fonts (.ttf + .txt licenses)
  - Search this directory for appropriate typography
  - Use different fonts to make typography part of the art

### References
- `references/pptxgenjs-helpers.md`: API summary and dependency details

## Authoring Rules (from slides)

- Set theme fonts explicitly. Do not rely on PowerPoint defaults.
- Use `autoFontSize`, `calcTextBox`, and related helpers; do not use PptxGenJS `fit` or `autoFit`.
- Use bullet options, not literal `•` characters.
- Use `imageSizingCrop` or `imageSizingContain` instead of built-in image sizing.
- Use `latexToSvgDataUri()` for equations and `codeToRuns()` for syntax-highlighted code.
- Prefer native PowerPoint charts for simple visuals so reviewers can edit them.
- For complex charts/diagrams, render SVG externally and place in slide.
- Include `warnIfSlideHasOverlaps()` and `warnIfSlideElementsOutOfBounds()` in submitted JS.
- Fix all unintentional overlap and out-of-bounds warnings before delivery.

## Design Rules (from canvas-design)

- **VISUAL FIRST**: Information lives in design, not paragraphs
- **MINIMAL TEXT**: Text is sparse, essential-only, integrated as visual element
- **NO OVERLAP**: Every element must have clear separation
- **PROPER MARGINS**: All content within canvas boundaries with breathing room
- **SOPHISTICATION**: Never cartoony or amateur — always museum-quality
- **REFINEMENT OVER ADDITION**: When in doubt, refine existing elements rather than add new ones

## Hard Rules

- No filler copy.
- No more than two typefaces without a clear reason.
- No more than one accent color unless the product has a strong system.
- No implementation before design philosophy is established.
- No slides without visual thesis.
- No overlapping elements.
- No text falling off canvas boundaries.

## Reject These Failures

- Generic SaaS card grid as the first impression
- Beautiful image with weak brand presence
- Strong headline with no clear action
- Busy imagery behind text
- Sections that repeat the same mood statement
- Carousel with no narrative purpose
- Building without a design philosophy
- Text-heavy visual art
- Overlapping or poorly spaced elements

## Litmus Checks

- Is the brand or product unmistakable in the first screen?
- Is there one strong visual anchor?
- Can the page be understood by scanning headlines only?
- Does each section have one job?
- Does the design look meticulously crafted?
- Would the design still feel premium if all decorative shadows were removed?
- Is the design philosophy clearly expressed visually?

## Multi-Page / Multi-Slide Option

For additional pages or slides:
- Create more pages along the same design philosophy
- Distinctly different but thematically connected
- Treat the first page as one in a whole coffee table book
- Have pages almost tell a story in a very tasteful way
- Exercise full creative freedom

## Lineage

- **Parents**: slides, canvas-design
- **Base**: canvas-design
- **Cauldron Version**: v1.1
- **Merged**: 2026-06-15
- **Merge Operator**: AI Assistant