Presentation Planner

Overview

Turn a topic or rough outline into a validated Slide Plan through structured
planning, before any slides are generated.

Core principle: A presentation without a narrative strategy is just a
collection of bullet points. Every minute spent on planning saves ten minutes
of slide reshuffling.

Violating the letter but not the spirit doesn't count. Dumping the user's
outline into a slide-per-section format is not planning — it's transcription.
Real planning identifies the core message, selects a narrative framework,
and structures content for the target audience.

Announce at start:

"Activating presentation planner — I'll help you design the narrative
before generating any slides."

When to Use

Always before interactive-presentation-generator:

• User wants to create a presentation from a topic or idea
• User has a rough outline that needs structure and polish
• User wants to convert a report or document into a presentation
• User asks "help me plan a talk about X"

Exceptions (planner can be skipped):

• User provides a complete, per-slide plan with titles and key points
• User explicitly says "skip planning" or "just generate slides"
• User only needs to re-style an existing presentation (no content change)

The Iron Law

NO SLIDES WITHOUT A NARRATIVE STRATEGY FIRST

• Do NOT chain to interactive-presentation-generator before the user
  approves a Slide Plan
• Do NOT skip Audience Analysis — even "obvious" audiences have
  assumptions worth examining
• Do NOT present a Slide Plan and proceed without explicit user approval
• "Looks good" or "go ahead" from the user counts as approval
• Silence or topic change does NOT count as approval — ask explicitly

Workflow

Phase 1: Intake

Auto-detect input mode:

• From-scratch: User provides only a topic, keyword, or brief
  description → enter full planning flow from Phase 2
• Optimize: User provides an existing outline, document path, or
  pastes structured content → read and analyze, then skip to Phase 3
  with pre-filled context

Gather information (one question at a time):

1. Purpose — What should this presentation achieve?
   • Persuade (adopt a proposal, approve a budget)
   • Educate (teach a concept, share knowledge)
   • Report (status update, project summary)
   • Inspire (keynote, motivational, vision)
2. Audience — Who is listening?
   • Technical (engineers, developers)
   • Executive (C-suite, directors, managers)
   • General (mixed, non-specialist)
   • Domain expert (researchers, analysts, designers)
3. Duration — How long?
   • Lightning talk (5 min)
   • Short session (15 min)
   • Standard session (30 min)
   • Full session (60 min)
4. Constraints — Anything mandatory or forbidden?
   • Must-include content, company guidelines, tone requirements
   • If none, move on

For Optimize mode: Read the existing material first, then ask only
questions whose answers are not already evident from the content.

Phase 2: Audience Analysis & Framework Selection

Audience Profile:
Generate a 3-sentence audience profile covering:

• Who they are and what they already know
• What they care about (their goals, pain points)
• What will make them act on your message

Auto-select narrative framework based on purpose + audience:

Purpose	Audience	Framework
Persuade decision-makers	Executive	SCQA (Situation → Complication → Question → Answer)
Educate or share knowledge	Any	What → So What → Now What
Report progress or results	Executive / Mixed	Chronological (timeline with milestones)
Sell a product or project	Any	Problem → Solution → Impact
Tell a story or journey	General	Hero's Journey (challenge → transformation → result)
Compare options for a decision	Technical / Executive	Compare & Contrast (criteria matrix)

Present the selection:

"Based on your audience ([profile]) and purpose ([purpose]), I recommend
the [Framework Name] framework because [reason]. Here's how it
structures your talk: [brief outline of framework sections]."

"Does this framework fit, or would you prefer a different approach?"

Phase 3: Narrative Strategy & Outline

Produce:

1. Core Message — One sentence the audience should remember if they
   forget everything else
2. Supporting Messages — 3-5 key arguments or evidence that support
   the core message
3. Story Arc — Map each section to its role in the narrative:
   • Opening: hook the audience (question, statistic, story)
   • Build-up: establish context and evidence
   • Climax: deliver the core insight or recommendation
   • Resolution: summarize and call to action
4. Section Outline — Each section's title, purpose, and estimated
   slide count

When material is insufficient:

"Your [section] lacks concrete data or examples. Would you like to run
critical-research to find supporting evidence before continuing?"

If user declines, proceed with available material and note the gap.

Present outline for approval. User must confirm before Phase 4.

Phase 4: Slide Plan

Expand the approved outline into a per-slide plan:

## Slide Plan: [Presentation Title]

**Framework**: [Selected Framework]
**Duration**: [X] min | **Total slides**: [N]
**Core Message**: [One sentence]

---

### Slide 1: Title Slide
- **Title**: [Presentation title]
- **Subtitle**: [Context or tagline]
- **Visual**: Cover image

### Slide 2: [Opening Hook]
- **Title**: [Engaging question or statement]
- **Key Points**:
  - [Point 1]
  - [Point 2]
  - [Point 3]
- **Speaker Note**: [What to say, 2-3 sentences]
- **Visual Suggestion**: [chart / image / diagram / none]

### Slide 3-N: [Content Slides]
...

### Slide N: [Closing / CTA]
- **Title**: [Call to action or summary]
- **Key Points**:
  - [Takeaway 1]
  - [Takeaway 2]
  - [Next steps]
- **Speaker Note**: [Closing remarks]
- **Visual**: Ending image

Slide count guidelines:

Duration	Slide Count	Pace
5 min	5-7 slides	~1 min/slide
15 min	12-18 slides	~1 min/slide
30 min	20-30 slides	~1-1.5 min/slide
60 min	35-50 slides	~1-1.5 min/slide

Present Slide Plan for approval. User must confirm before Phase 5.

Phase 5: Handoff

After Slide Plan approval:

"Slide Plan is ready. Would you like to generate the presentation now?"

• Yes → invoke interactive-presentation-generator with the Slide
  Plan as input. The generator can skip its own Step 1 (Gather
  Requirements) and Step 4 (Generate Content Structure) since the
  planner already produced them. Proceed directly to Step 2 (Choose
  Style) → Step 3 (Choose Format) → Step 5 (Generate Files).
• No → save the Slide Plan to
  docs/presentations/YYYY-MM-DD-<topic>-slide-plan.md and inform the
  user they can run interactive-presentation-generator later with this
  file as input.
• Revise → go back to the phase the user wants to adjust.

Narrative Frameworks Reference

SCQA (Situation → Complication → Question → Answer)

Best for persuading decision-makers. Establishes shared context, introduces
the problem, frames the question, then delivers the recommendation.

What → So What → Now What

Best for education and knowledge sharing. Presents facts, explains their
significance, then suggests actions.

Problem → Solution → Impact

Best for selling ideas or products. Shows the pain, presents the fix,
quantifies the benefit.

Hero's Journey

Best for storytelling and inspiration. Takes the audience through a
challenge, the struggle, and the transformation.

Compare & Contrast

Best for decision presentations. Sets criteria, evaluates options
side-by-side, delivers a recommendation.

Chronological

Best for status updates and retrospectives. Walks through the timeline
with milestones, turning points, and current state.

Rationalization Prevention

Excuse	Reality
"The user already has an outline"	An outline is a list of topics, not a narrative. Lists don't persuade, stories do.
"This is just a status update"	Status updates are the most common bad presentations. A Chronological framework with a Core Message transforms them.
"The audience already knows the topic"	Experts are the hardest audience — they'll spot gaps in your argument instantly. Planning matters more, not less.
"I'll just make a slide per bullet"	That's a document, not a presentation. Presentations need a narrative arc.
"Planning takes too long"	A 5-minute talk needs a 5-minute plan. Saving 5 minutes of planning costs 30 minutes of reshuffling slides.

Red Flags — STOP

• You're generating slides and realize you never planned → STOP.
  Plan first.
• You skipped Audience Analysis because the audience "seemed obvious" →
  go back and write the profile
• You produced a Slide Plan that's just the outline with "Slide N:"
  prefixed → that's formatting, not planning
• You have no Core Message → the presentation has no point
• Every slide has 6+ bullet points → you're writing a document, not
  planning a presentation
• You chained to generator without user approval of the Slide Plan →
  revert and ask

Examples

Example 1: From-Scratch (Technical Talk)

User: "Help me plan a 30-minute talk on WebAssembly for backend devs"

RIGHT:

"Activating presentation planner — I'll design the narrative first."

1. Gathers: Purpose = Educate, Audience = Technical, Duration = 30 min
2. Audience Profile: "Backend developers who know JavaScript/Python but
   haven't used Wasm. They care about performance and deployment
   simplicity. Concrete benchmarks will make them take Wasm seriously."
3. Auto-selects: What → So What → Now What (educational)
4. Core Message: "WebAssembly lets you run near-native-speed code in
   places you never could before — and it's ready for production today."
5. Produces 22-slide plan with speaker notes
6. "Slide Plan ready. Generate now?" → chains to generator

WRONG:

"I'll create a presentation about WebAssembly."
(Skipped planning entirely, jumped to generator)

Example 2: Optimize Mode (Existing Outline)

User: "I have this outline for my quarterly review, can you improve it?
[pastes 10 bullet points]"

RIGHT:

"Activating presentation planner — I'll analyze your outline."

1. Detects Optimize mode, reads the 10 bullets
2. Asks: "Is this for your leadership team or your direct team?"
3. Identifies: no Core Message, flat structure, data-heavy sections
   lack context
4. Auto-selects: Chronological with added "So What" for each
   milestone
5. Restructures into narrative arc, suggests where to add impact
   statements
6. Produces Slide Plan for approval

Example 3: Report to Presentation

User: "Turn my monthly report into a presentation for the board"

RIGHT:

1. Reads the report file (Optimize mode)
2. Audience = Executive → auto-selects SCQA
3. Extracts data from report, restructures around a Core Message
4. Suggests: "The report has 15 metrics. For a board presentation,
   I recommend focusing on the top 3 that support your Core Message.
   The rest can go in an appendix slide."
5. Produces focused Slide Plan (not a 1:1 report-to-slides mapping)

Constraints

• One question per message during intake — never batch questions
• Always produce a Core Message — no plan is complete without one
• Always auto-select a framework — present the recommendation, don't
  ask users to pick from a menu
• Never skip Audience Analysis — scale it down for obvious cases,
  don't skip it
• Slide Plan must be approved before handoff to generator
• Respect slide count guidelines — flag if the plan exceeds the
  guideline by more than 20%

---

Error Handling

User Provides Contradictory Requirements

• Surface the contradiction: "You mentioned this is for executives (who
  prefer high-level) but also want to include code demos (which are
  technical). Which takes priority?"
• Do not silently resolve — let the user decide

User Abandons Mid-Session

• If the user changes topic or says "never mind", stop cleanly
• Do not save partial Slide Plans
• If resuming later, re-read context from scratch

Existing Outline is Unstructured

• If the provided material is too unstructured to analyze (e.g., stream
  of consciousness notes), inform the user:
  "This material is quite unstructured. I'll switch to From-scratch mode
  and use your notes as reference material."
• Extract what you can, ask for the rest

Content Exceeds Duration

• If the Slide Plan exceeds the target slide count by more than 20%:
  "The current plan has [N] slides for a [X]-minute talk. That's
  [Y] slides over the guideline. I recommend cutting [section] or
  splitting into two talks."
• Let the user decide what to cut

Research Skill Unavailable or Inconclusive

• If user agrees to run critical-research but it returns inconclusive
  results, note the gap in the Slide Plan:
  "Speaker Note: [Data needed — research was inconclusive. Consider
  gathering this before presenting.]"

---

Security Considerations

Slide Plan File Safety

• Validate the docs/presentations/ path exists before writing; create
  if missing
• Sanitize <topic> in filenames — strip characters outside [a-z0-9-]
  to prevent path traversal
• Never include confidential data in Slide Plans unless the user
  explicitly provides it

User Input in Slide Plans

• Slide Plans may quote user content verbatim — escape markdown injection
  if rendered in web context
• Do not embed executable code blocks from user input without review
• Speaker Notes may contain sensitive talking points — remind user if
  the plan will be shared

Scope Limitation

• This skill reads existing files (outlines, reports) and writes one
  Slide Plan file
• It does not generate presentation files (that's the generator's job)
• It does not execute code, install packages, or modify source files
• The only file mutation is creating docs/presentations/*.md

---

Related Skills

• interactive-presentation-generator — downstream: produces slides
  from the Slide Plan
• critical-research — optional upstream: fills evidence gaps in
  Phase 3
• report-generator — optional upstream: reports can be input for
  Optimize mode
• brainstorming — sibling: both are planning skills; brainstorming
  is for code, presentation-planner is for slides