Imported from pascalamiet/ai-setup (skills/create-slides/SKILL.md). Install upstream with npx skills add pascalamiet/ai-setup --skill create-slides. Copyright stays with the author (MIT).

create-slides — LaTeX Beamer Scaffold & Design Guide

This skill does two things:

1. Scaffold a new slide deck from the standard template (Steps 1–5).
2. Guide the design, rhetoric, compile workflow, and quality review of any Beamer deck — whether freshly scaffolded or brought in from existing content.

Usage

/create-slides [path]

path is the directory where the slides folder should be created. If omitted, use documents/slides/ relative to the current working directory. If the target directory already exists and contains files, ask the user before overwriting.

If the user brings existing content (a paper, notes, a prior deck, or a short research description), treat this as a redesign/generation task: scaffold the template, then populate it with restructured content following the rhetoric and design principles in this skill.

Step 1 — Gather inputs

Ask the user for the following. Accept anything they provide and use sensible defaults for anything left blank.

If the user invokes the skill with a short description (e.g. /create-slides "DML and negative weights in DiD"), treat that string as the title and infer a draft subtitle and audience from it — tell the user what you assumed.

Step 2 — Create the directory

mkdir -p <path>/figures
mkdir -p <path>/scripts
mkdir -p <path>/tables

Copy the Makefile template:

cp ~/.claude/skills/create-slides/Makefile <path>/Makefile

Standard output structure:

<path>/
├── slides.tex        # Main Beamer file
├── slides.pdf        # Compiled deck (after Step 4)
├── Makefile          # Build automation (make / make watch / make open / make clean)
├── figures/          # PNG/PDF figures — referenced as figures/FILENAME
├── scripts/          # Standalone R/Python/Stata scripts that generate figures
└── tables/           # .tex table fragments

Step 3 — Copy and fill slides.tex

The canonical template lives at ~/.claude/skills/create-slides/template.tex. Copy it to <path>/slides.tex:

cp ~/.claude/skills/create-slides/template.tex <path>/slides.tex

Then edit the file in place:

Placeholders — every \ph{NAME} call renders as bold [NAME] in the PDF (easy to spot during drafting). Replace them using the user's inputs:

Colors — convert the user's PRIMARY_COLOR hex to two RGB-in-[0,1] triples and substitute them on the two \definecolor lines marked % COLOR:

\definecolor{PRIMARY}{rgb}{R, G, B}          % primary brand color
\definecolor{PRIMARY-light}{rgb}{R, G, B}    % lighter accent (~30% tint)

For the light accent, blend the primary color with white at roughly 35 % (i.e. light = primary × 0.65 + 1 × 0.35 per channel).

Extra sections — if the user requested additional sections, insert them before \section{Next Steps}, each with a section-title card frame and at least one content frame stub.

Project-specific macros — if supplied, insert them after % PROJECT-SPECIFIC MACROS -- add here in the preamble.

Populating from existing content — if the user provided source material, apply the rhetoric framework (see Rhetoric Design) to restructure it into slides before filling placeholders.

Step 4 — Compile and review

4a — Code-first workflow (if figures are needed)

Always generate figures before inserting them. Never insert a placeholder \includegraphics path that does not yet exist in figures/.

run script → verify PNG/PDF output → insert into slides.tex → compile

Save each figure script as a standalone file in scripts/ so the user can rerun it independently.

4b — Initial compile

cd <path> && latexmk -pdf -interaction=nonstopmode slides.tex

Report whether it succeeded. If it fails, show the first error from the log.

4c — Fix ALL compilation warnings

Check the log for and eliminate every instance of:

• Overfull hbox / underfull hbox
• Overfull vbox / underfull vbox

No matter how small or inconsequential they appear. These warnings mean LaTeX is making layout compromises you did not authorize.

Recompile after fixing.

4d — Check for silent visual errors

Compilation success does not mean visual success. These problems do NOT produce errors or warnings but ruin the deck:

Tikz:

• Shape size constraints forcing label misplacement
• Arrows pointing to wrong locations
• Coordinate systems misaligned

Software-generated graphics (ggplot2, matplotlib, Stata):

• Axis labels cut off or overlapping
• Legend placement obscuring data
• Text sizing inconsistent with slide aesthetic
• Coordinate / position constraints wrong

To check, explicitly ask: "Do the coordinate values match the intended visual placement?" — do not assume the figure looks correct without verifying.

4e — Multi-agent review (for substantive decks)

For a full deck going to a seminar or conference, run two review passes after the initial compile:

Reviewer 1 (Rhetoric & Flow): Evaluates narrative arc, MB/MC balance across slides, technical rigor, and whether the argument structure follows the audience type guidelines below.

Reviewer 2 (Graphics Specialist): Checks ONLY graphics — Tikz positioning vs. intended positioning, ggplot/matplotlib label placement, numerical accuracy in figures, coordinate/position constraint conflicts.

Incorporate feedback from both reviewers and recompile a final time.

Step 5 — Report to the user

Confirm what was created and print the full file path to slides.tex. Remind the user to:

• Replace remaining \ph{…} placeholders with real content
• Add figures to figures/ and uncomment the \includegraphics lines
• Remove or repurpose stub frames they don't need
• Link appendix frames to main-deck frames via \hypertarget / \hyperlink pairs
• Run latexmk -pdf slides.tex (or open in their LaTeX editor) to compile

Rhetoric Design

Read rhetoric.md — it sits in the same directory as this SKILL.md file. It contains the full framework: Aristotelian modes, MB/MC optimization, visual grammar, common failures, and context-specific applications. Load it whenever you are populating slide content or reviewing a deck's argument structure. The summary below covers the most frequently needed rules.

Narrative arc

Every presentation follows one of two patterns depending on audience:

Academic research (seminars, conferences):

Hook / motivation (10%)  →  Setup & literature (20%)  →  Method (30%)  →  Results (30%)  →  Conclusion & next steps (10%)

General / applied audience:

WHAT — hook, problem statement (10%)
WHY  — stakes, context, why now (30%)
HOW  — solution, method, evidence (50%)
CLOSE — takeaways, next steps (10%)

The hook comes first. Never open with definitions, background, or an agenda slide before the audience knows why they should care.

Slide-level rules

1. One idea per slide. If you need "and" in the title, split the slide.
2. Titles as assertions, not labels. "Estimates are robust to clustering" beats "Robustness checks."
3. 5–7 words per bullet. Slides are speaking cues, not scripts.
4. Visual over text. A well-labeled figure beats three bullet points.
5. Readable from the back. Body text minimum 18pt; Beamer's defaults satisfy this — do not shrink fonts to fit more content.

Cognitive load balance (MB/MC equivalence)

The goal is NOT to maximize information density. The goal is smoothness: a consistent cognitive load throughout, so the audience isn't overwhelmed on slide 8 and bored on slide 14.

Allowed exception — "jump scares": a deliberate, brief spike in density for rhetorical effect (a striking statistic, a surprising result). These must be intentional, not accidents of poor layout.

Presentation types and timing

Research seminar / conference (20–30 min):

PhD workshop / work-in-progress (45–60 min): Allocate more time to methodology and open questions; plan for longer discussion.

Short talk / lightning (10 min): Lead with the result. One slide per: motivation, method, main finding, implication.

Audience calibration

PhD seminar: Assume strong technical background but varying exposure to your specific method. Emphasize intuition alongside formal results. State the identification assumption clearly and early.

Conference (specialists): State identification strategy in slide 2. Key results need one clear figure each. Skip derivations; cite the paper.

Conference (mixed field): More context, less jargon. Lead with economic significance, not statistical.

Undergraduate course: One concept per slide. Worked examples over proofs. Return to the motivating question at the end of every section.

Anti-patterns to avoid

• Opening with "Today I'm going to talk about…"
• Reading slides verbatim
• Agenda slide before the hook
• Shrinking font to fit more text
• More than one figure per slide (unless explicitly comparing two)
• Overfull/underfull warnings left in the log
• Appendix frames that advance the main slide counter
• Apologizing for preliminary results

LaTeX & Beamer Conventions

• Theme: Madrid with a two-color palette (PRIMARY and PRIMARY-light).
• Aspect ratio: 16:9 (aspectratio=169).
• Placeholder macro: \ph{NAME} → bold [NAME] in the PDF. Delete the \newcommand{\ph} line once all placeholders are filled.
• Appendix frame counter: wrapped between \backupbegin / \backupend so appendix frames do not advance the main slide count.
• Section title cards: each \section{} is preceded by a centered section-title frame using \color{PRIMARY}{\huge{Section Name}}.
• Figures: always placed in figures/ and referenced as \includegraphics[width=…]{figures/FILENAME} (no extension needed for PDF/PNG).
• Math helpers pre-defined: \indep, \ind{} (indicator).
• Theorem environments: thm, pf, dfn; block colors auto-switch to PRIMARY background inside theorem and definition environments.
• Navigation buttons: use \hypertarget{label}{} on target frames and \hyperlink{label}{\beamergotobutton{Text}} to link back from appendix slides.
• Two-column layout: use the columns environment with [t] alignment and 0.48\textwidth columns for side-by-side content.
• Bibliography: cite inline as \cite{} or \citet{}; bibliography slide is optional — place in the appendix if included.
• Build commands: make (compile), make watch (auto-recompile on save), make open (compile + open PDF), make clean (remove aux files including Beamer's .nav, .snm, .vrb).
• TikZ diagrams: ready-to-paste snippets for DAGs, event study timelines, DiD 2×2 tables, methodology pipelines, and RD cutoff diagrams live in tikz-snippets.tex in the same directory as this SKILL.md. Read that file and copy the relevant snippet into the frame. Each snippet needs \usetikzlibrary{...} calls noted in its header comment — add them to the preamble if not already present.