Academic PPTX Skill
Academic PPTX Skill overrides Claude's design-forward slide defaults with communication-first standards for conference talks, seminars, and thesis defenses.
Last reviewed by the paperbanana team on Jul 13, 2026
Install
Download the repository as a ZIP (Code → Download ZIP on GitHub), then in claude.ai go to Customize → Skills and upload the ZIP. Requires Code execution and file creation enabled under Settings → Capabilities.What is Academic PPTX Skill?
Academic PPTX Skill is a Claude Skill that changes how Claude designs presentation slides when the audience will be evaluating reasoning and evidence — conference papers, seminar talks, thesis defenses, grant briefings, and lab meetings. Instead of Claude's default design-forward style (which favors visual flair), the skill enforces a communication-first standard drawn from Barbara Minto's Pyramid Principle, Naegle's 2021 PLOS Computational Biology paper "Ten simple rules for effective presentation slides," and standard consulting/academic presentation practice.
The core mechanism is a set of rules Claude applies once the skill is triggered: every slide title must be an "action title" — a complete sentence stating the takeaway, not a topic label — and the whole deck must pass the "ghost deck test," meaning the action titles alone, read in sequence, tell the complete argument. Results slides get exactly one exhibit with the key finding annotated directly on the chart; every borrowed figure or data point carries an in-text citation, with a References slide at the end; and the deck must end on a Conclusions slide that stays on screen during Q&A, never on "Thank You" or a blank slide.
Academic PPTX Skill is explicitly a content-and-structure layer, not a slide-generation engine: it works alongside Anthropic's built-in PPTX skill, which handles the technical work of creating and editing the .pptx file itself. The skill also defines minimal design standards — white backgrounds, one sans-serif font, a maximum of three colors, no decorative icons or gradients — that override the PPTX skill's design-forward defaults for this specific academic context, and ships an academic-specific QA checklist to run before a deck is considered finished.
Core capabilities
Action-title enforcement
Every slide title is written as a complete sentence stating the takeaway rather than a topic label, so a reader skimming only the titles gets the argument.
Ghost deck test during planning
Before building slides, the skill drafts a slide-by-slide outline and checks that reading only the proposed action titles in sequence tells the complete story — fixing the outline before any slide is built.
Argument-first deck structure
The deck is planned as a logical argument (situation → complication → resolution) rather than a collection of independent slides, following the Pyramid Principle.
Exhibit and citation discipline
One exhibit per results slide with the key finding annotated directly on the chart; every borrowed figure or data point gets an in-slide citation, plus a References slide at the end of the deck.
Minimal, communication-first design standards
White backgrounds, a single sans-serif font, a maximum of three colors (default navy primary, mid-blue accent), left-aligned body text, and no decorative icons, gradients, or accent lines.
Academic-specific QA checklist
A ten-item checklist — action titles present, ghost deck test passes, one exhibit per results slide, citations on every borrowed figure, References slide exists, Conclusions slide is last — run before the deck is considered done.
What you can use it for
Building a conference talk from a paper
Say "make slides for my conference paper on X" and the skill detects the academic context, plans an argument-structured outline, and applies action titles and citation discipline automatically.
Preparing a thesis defense deck
Ask for a thesis defense deck; the skill structures it as situation → complication → resolution, keeps one exhibit per results slide, and ends on a Conclusions slide that stays up during questions.
Turning a dataset or result into one clear slide
For any results slide, the skill places a single exhibit and requires a "so what" annotation directly on the chart instead of leaving the audience to infer the finding.
Drafting a grant briefing or lab meeting deck
The same structured-argument mode applies to grant briefings and internal lab presentations, prioritizing argument structure and data over layout and aesthetics.
Auditing an existing deck before presenting
Run the built-in QA checklist against a drafted deck to catch missing action titles, missing citations, a missing References slide, or a "Thank You" ending before you present.
How to get started
- 1
Download and upload the skill
Click Code → Download ZIP on the GitHub repo, then go to claude.ai → Customize → Skills and upload the ZIP file.
- 2
Enable code execution and file creation
Confirm Code execution and file creation are enabled in Settings → Capabilities — the skill and the underlying PPTX skill both require this to generate .pptx files.
- 3
Confirm the skill is active
Check that the skill appears in your skills list and is toggled on; no special invocation syntax is needed beyond that.
- 4
Ask naturally for academic slides
Prompt with something like "Build a deck for my thesis defense" or "Create a seminar presentation about my research on Y" — Claude detects the academic context and applies the skill's guidelines automatically, working alongside the built-in PPTX skill for file generation.
How it compares to similar skills
Academic PPTX Skill is narrowly scoped to slide content and design standards — it assumes Anthropic's built-in PPTX skill for the technical .pptx file work. If you need LaTeX/Beamer output or a broader research-program toolkit, consider these alternatives:
Claude Code My Workflow
Pick Claude Code My Workflow if you want Beamer/Quarto slide creation with multi-agent visual and pedagogy review inside a full forkable research-program template, rather than a standalone PPTX content skill.
LaTeX Document Skill
Pick LaTeX Document Skill if you need a Beamer presentation template alongside other LaTeX document types (thesis, poster, CV) in one Claude Code skill.
Claude Prism
Pick Claude Prism if you want a full desktop writing workspace with offline LaTeX compilation rather than a slide-content skill layered on claude.ai.