The deck workshop: ten steps to a deck that looks designed
This chapter is the spine of the book. It follows the official workshop tutorial, How to Create an AI-Powered PPT with OpenDesign, rewritten with the judgement calls spelled out and the prompts reworked so you can lift them whole.
The idea
In one line: split "make a deck" into a chain of small steps, each of which you can check on its own.
Most people's mental picture of AI slide-making is: type a topic, receive a pile of generic template pages. This workflow is different because it gets the order right.
- Decide who you're persuading and what decision you want out of them.
- Choose a visual direction by comparing images, not by trading adjectives.
- Lay the content out slide by slide.
- Only then design — and once designed, diff it against the reference.
- Assets, charts, and motion each get their own step, and every one of them says "not on every slide".
- Global motion goes last, because adding it early means later edits break the timing.
The ten steps
| Step | What it does | Where | What comes out |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | Decide what the deck has to win | Any AI chat | Narrative, core argument, slide order |
| 1 | Four to six directions in one image | Image Mode | One reference image |
| 2 | Lay out the content slide by slide | Any AI chat | A content skeleton plus a plain-text HTML preview |
| 3 | Build the chosen style as an editable deck | Deck Mode | The first HTML deck |
| 4 | Diff against the reference and fix it | OpenDesign chat | A second version that starts to look designed |
| 5 | Real logos and brand assets | OpenDesign chat | Credibility |
| 6 | Images only where they explain something | OpenDesign chat | A few images that earn their place |
| 7 | Charts that carry a conclusion | OpenDesign chat | Data slides that hold up |
| 8 | Three.js and motion, sparingly | OpenDesign chat | One or two effects with a reason |
| 9 | Comment, Mark, and Edit in their places | The preview | Details closed out |
| 10 | Presentation flow and export | OpenDesign | Something you can present |
Where the time goes
Steps 0 to 2 are thinking. They eat half the clock and almost none of your credits. Steps 3 to 8 are generation — fast, and where the spend is. Steps 9 and 10 are closing out. A 10-to-15-slide deck takes one to two hours once you know the flow.
What this workflow covers
Research reports, product pitches, lecture material, portfolios, internal strategy memos, event retros — anything that has to become a visual deck. The source material can be one document, a handful of notes, a transcript, a research summary, or a messy pile of bullets.
What you need: OpenDesign installed, one agent connected, and source material that states the topic, the audience, and the purpose. If your agent can browse, download assets, generate images, and edit code, the whole thing goes considerably smoother.
Three principles that run through all of it
One: every step says "don't do the next step yet".
Nearly every prompt here contains a Do not ... yet. That isn't padding. An agent's default is to hand you the whole thing at once, and the value of this workflow is precisely in the checkpoints. Fail to stop it and it will write the HTML at step 0, taking every intermediate review away from you.
Two: never say "make it better".
Vague evaluation buys vague changes. Every improvement instruction here has a reference object: diff against this image, score against these five dimensions, comment on this element. With a reference, the change is checkable.
Three: every additive step says "not on every slide".
Logos, images, charts, 3D, motion — all five steps repeat it. Same reason each time: an agent will spread whatever you asked for evenly across the deck, and a good deck has density and relief. Set no ceiling and you get a full screen.
Where to start
Work through step 0. If you already have a content outline, start at step 1. If the visual direction is settled too, go to step 3.
Every prompt is also collected in Reference / Prompt library if you're in a hurry.