Notes From Building Slaide
Building Slaide in public: notes on plain-text slide decks, AI-authored presentations, and the tools that make Markdown into a deck.
Reviewing a Deck the Way You Review Code
PowerPoint removed Compare and Merge in version 2502, Google Slides has no diff view, and even a clean text diff can hide a broken slide.
Four Accessibility Checks to Run on a Deck
Contrast, alt text, reading order, and color alone. Four checks for what makes a deck hard to read for part of the room.
Your Deck Looks Different on Their Laptop
The deck you rehearsed is rarely the deck they open. It is almost always fonts, and there is an honest ranking of fixes for it.
What Is Actually Inside a .pptx File
Rename a .pptx to .zip and open it. Inside is a folder of XML parts linked by reference, and that's why decks break without warning.
A Board Deck Is Not an Investor Deck
An investor deck persuades a stranger. A board deck calibrates people who already believe you, and the two want opposite documents.
Using AI Agents to Build and Review Slide Decks
A model can write a slide deck the way it writes a function, as long as the deck is text. This is how the Slaide MCP server and agent skill work.
From PowerPoint to Plain Text and Back
What slaide import carries over from a .pptx, what it rasterizes or drops, and when to start a deck from scratch instead.
Automating Weekly Status Reports With Plain Text Slides
A weekly deck is often the same copy-paste every Monday. A template file and a script can replace it. Here is the setup.
Why Pitch Decks Fail: Mistakes to Fix Before You Send One
A 2015 study found investors spent an average of 3 minutes 44 seconds on a deck. Here are the mistakes that make a deck fail a quick scan.
Generating Slide Decks From a Script
A .slaide file is plain text, which means a script can write one. Templating a deck is string substitution, and that is the point.
A Markdown Presentation Workflow in Your Editor
Write decks as plain text in your editor, export from the terminal, and use PowerPoint only when someone else needs to edit.
Slaide is on the App Store
The Slaide iOS app is on the App Store. Build and present decks on your phone, with AI generation and PowerPoint and PDF export.
How to Version Control Your Presentations With Git
PowerPoint files in git give you a commit log and nothing else. Here is what a diff on a plain-text slide deck looks like.
Turning Meeting Notes Into a Slide Deck in Five Minutes
A worked example: paste meeting notes, add structure constraints, render, fix three things, export. The five-minute figure is an estimate.
How to Build a Quarterly Business Review Deck People Actually Read
A five-section structure for a quarterly business review deck, with a twelve-slide limit and one headline number. My opinion, not a study.
Nail Your YC Demo Day Pitch in 5 Slides
A five-slide structure for a demo day pitch: one problem sentence, one traction number, and a clear ask.
What Pitch Deck Data Says About Slide Count, Team Slides, and Investor Attention
A review of published pitch deck data from DocSend and Storydoc: how long investors spend on a deck, why the team slide matters, and what the numbers say about slide count.
Which AI Model Actually Makes the Best Slides
I gave Claude, GPT-4o, and Gemini the same 10-slide brief and compared text density, deck structure, and slide titles.
A Prompt Structure for Generating an Investor Deck
A prompt structure for getting a 12-slide investor deck from an AI, section by section, plus what to fix by hand afterward.
Why Slaide decks are plain text files
Slaide keeps a slide deck in one plain-text file, so it diffs in git, reviews like code, and an agent can write it without touching a GUI.