For at least two years now, I have made it a habit to stop creating PowerPoint presentations manually. And yet, I find myself using them more and more to present summaries of complex meetings or to outline future projects. When you avoid being overly wordy, slides help distill a project down to a few essential facts, making it easier to engage with your team.
For a while, I used a manual workflow. I would draft the content for my slides, highlighting specific phrases or outlining concepts to be developed, within Obsidian (using .md files, which are similar to plain text files).
Next, I would ask ClaudeCode to generate a blank template for a hypothetical project, involving a fictional company, but centered on a topic similar to the one I needed to address (ensuring no sensitive data was ever shared).
A local agent running via Ollama would then map my content (.md file) onto that template (a .pptx file), resulting in a professional, well-structured presentation.
All that remained was to finalize the details and manually add in any sensitive information.
However, this process is time-consuming; despite strict prompting instructions, it often results in a lot of “AI slop”, and the final output tends to look very repetitive.
Consequently, I decided to build my first official “SKILL” for Claude Code (which also works with other frameworks like Copilot or OpenCode) a tool that is actually composed of three distinct skills.
The core component, Make_Clean_PPTX take you content, analyzes it, selects the most appropriate formatting from a library of templates, and generates a clean, black-and-white PowerPoint presentation, free of any unnecessary embellishments. Make_Clean_PPTX generates an initial version, allowing you to focus your revisions, refining the messaging, slide order, and finer details.
Next come Make_Style_PPTX and Make_Colors_PPTX. The former applies a specific design style-tailored to the content or the user’s requirements, while preserving the established structure of the messaging from the initial version.
Finally, Make_Colors_PPTX applies the visual identity (brand guidelines) of your choice, whether derived from your corporate communications department’s standards, your company’s website (and its CSS), or even just your logo.
These “Skills” incorporate several safeguards to prevent the output from becoming “AI slop,” enhance accessibility, and—in the near future—ensure compliance with ISO standards.
Depending on your situation, you might need CLEAN + COLORS or CLEAN+STYLES+COLORS. The skill is divided into three options to suit your specific needs.
Here are two examples of how it can be used:
I once conducted a training session for startups to help them structure their commercial offering. The workshop was based on the 7P framework (or the marketing mix). Instead of using a training deck branded with my own company’s identity, I applied “Make_Colors_PPTX” to my presentation by providing the URL of the client’s corporate website. The agent then retrieved their actual brand guidelines (including colors, fonts, and even images) to generate a training deck perfectly tailored to the client’s brand identity.
Another example, I’m trying to compile market intelligence gathered from a wide range of web sources. My prompt in Claude Code is now straightforward:
Look at the news from the last 5 days across the 10 websites listed below, compile the competitive intelligence findings, compare to the company [Client]. Write into a .md file, and then use ‘Make_PPT’ to generate a presentation that adheres to the brand guidelines found at www.client.com.
This skill was initially only for my personal use, but many colleagues have expressed interest in using it.
So here it is, my first Claude Code Skills shared with you :
github.com/MaximeRumpler/Make_PPTX
I would greatly appreciate any feedback or examples of content that have been generated with it.
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