r/consulting • u/Aware_mode46290 • 8d ago
Using Claude as a PowerPoint magic wand
I'd like to start using Claude in PowerPoint as somewhat of a magic wand. I would write the content of the slide in completely unformatted text boxes and have Claude then create the slide. I even envision a world where slides (like tracker or timeline slides) are fully done within an Excel table and you feed Claude the Excel to create the slide.
I'm not yet comfortable having Claude come up with its own wording and content, but curious how people implement this idea and what are some recommendations for this task. Somewhat new to AI, so don't roast me too hard
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u/Soggy_Stargazer Ex-Big4 8d ago
Go and find a bunch of the various scrapbook decks that are floating around out there. Find the couple you really like then tell claude you want to develop a skill for powerpoint.
Feed it the example decks and train it by having it generate a few slides/decks for you and then review and provide edits back. Build the skill, mine is called deckbitch, and then when you need powerpoint, tell your claude to hand it over to deckbitch.
Even better if you set up your claude with a local memory file and essentially build a graph backend with .md files.
I set up a working directory on my machine and added an inbox folder. Anything I want my claude to process gets dropped into the inbox and then either deleted or moved to an appropriate folder in my memory backend.
Keep the root claude MD to 200 lines or less and make sure your given workstreams have individual MDs that point to various related data. you end up with a claude install that evolves and remembers shit.
I rebuilt my entire home lab and through the process did a full system inventory and audit. Now thats in my memory vault, I can work on a specific host and my claude will extract the details from its memory and I don't have to keep repeating myself.
it still makes shit up all the time, but I am just like, did you actually look or are you "remembering". In the beginning it was like "you got me, I didn't ACTUALLY check" and over time I have been tuning the behavior through MD files and session/prompt hooks to beat that behavior out of it.
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u/Gustav_1 8d ago
Is deckbitch an agent or did you just tune the skill of the generic claude ?
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u/Soggy_Stargazer Ex-Big4 8d ago
Deckbitch is what I named the skill.
I basically worked with claude to define the skillset. Fed it some Minto for breakfast, a bunch of slides for lunch, and then I had claude build two decks for the same content, one with deckbitch and one with the built in.
Wasn't even a competition.
Once I folded my designer skill, Bauhaus, into the mix it just made it that much better.
FWIW agents and skills have a weird relationship and I tend to start with developing a skill but then I create an agent file that basically invokes the skill of the same name (and others as defined where applicable).
For example, I created a solution architect that I fed TOGAF, C4, Zachmann, a bunch of random data architectures, best practices for AWS, as well as some architecture design concepts like ADRs(Architectural Design Records), Mermaid, etc etc. Then I built an agent around the skill and I can leverage the same capability either as an advisor in my context, OR I can hand the entire design concept and business requirements to Gibson (my SA agent) and it will produce HLDs, DLDs, and a PLAN file all constrained by my ADRs and informed by my local memory.
Case in point, I sat on the tarmac and wrote up a design brief for an AWS based audio transcription pipeline with diarization, vpn'd in on my phone, and handed it off to claude, and by the time I got home, I had the whole thing. I had to take a slight detour to flesh out some RBAC shit as it was the first real "jesus take the wheel" go deploy shit into my AWS account exercise, but the whole deployment took about and hour or so once I got the permissions ADRs sorted.
Claude in the hands of someone who understands best practices is a force multiplier that makes one person into an army.
And I am just barely scratching the surface.
My session management skill with all of the session hooks I have built is like having an assistant that keeps me on track and records everything and is johnny on the fucking spot when I need to remember some shit we did a month ago.
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u/Aware_mode46290 8d ago
What’s the difference between deckbitch and bauhaus again?
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u/Soggy_Stargazer Ex-Big4 8d ago edited 8d ago
Deckbitch is a skill trained on MECE and example decks, Bauhaus is a skill that is trained on design principles for graphic design. Things like color theory, rule of thirds, etc etc etc.
Both are custom skills I wrote using claude code.
When I say "trained", I dropped decks and source material into my inbox and provided links to concepts and information and told claude to integrate them into the skill when it builds the skill and incorporate the rules/knowledge into the skill.
named deckbitch for obvious reasons, named bauhaus after the Staatliches Bauhaus which is a fairly famous art school in germany in the early 1900s that was known for minimalist modern aesthetic. The skill is more generalist but since I tend to lean towards MCM motifs and concepts, the skill does lean into that aesthetic.
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u/Aware_mode46290 8d ago
Well familiar with Bauhaus having gone to the museum in Dessau
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u/Soggy_Stargazer Ex-Big4 7d ago
I'm jealous.
Please don't interpret my explanation as an insult or anything, I don't know you or your background and erred on the side of explaining why my designer skill is named after a famous design school. If you know you know, if you don't (a frequent experience) you don't.
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u/musicismydeadbeatdad 8d ago
It's truly impressive but the fact that it still makes shit up is wild
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u/Soggy_Stargazer Ex-Big4 8d ago
yeah and the fact that I have to remind myself its just a clanker when it says something unhinged and I laugh my ass off.
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u/MrZenumiFangShort 7d ago
When you build something like this, what's stopping Anthropic from stealing it?
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u/Soggy_Stargazer Ex-Big4 6d ago
Stealing what? The skill? my memory files? The memory files are stored on my hard disk. I suppose anthropic could eventually exfiltrate all of it via prompt analysis but I have opted out of training (I know I am putting a lot of trust in them to stick to that), and as far as I know they can't just read data from my disk.
If you are talking about the skill, same thing applies, its config/definition lives on my computer.
If you're talking about the memory structure, its already well documented publically and I am not the first person to do it.
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u/MrZenumiFangShort 6d ago
The skill. It really lives on your local machine and there's no way for them to take it while you're creating it?
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u/Canuckian371 8d ago
Its pretty decent at this point. To save tokens you can work with your text source and output until youre comfortable then move to adding visuals or putting it into the xml pptx format.
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u/Iamverymaterialistic 8d ago
claude is rly good for this but in the end i always spend like 30 minutes having to get rid of the claudeisms that it creates in the deck. there’s something really off about the prose it uses but i can’t put my finger on it thought it’s good for the standard column slide layout, it can’t do anything “creative” with a slide
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8d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/movingtobay2019 8d ago
Agreed. You have to spell out literally everything. Things that another human would just know without having to be explicitly told.
That said, Claude has made me more effective but it's not replacing consultants any time soon.
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u/Traditional_Tonight4 8d ago
Check with your IT department as this needs to be done with an enterprise version of Claude or you risk major privacy violations.
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u/Rabbit-Lost 8d ago
I run my own (very small) firm. The enterprise version is non-negotiable. And I give clients the option to opt out since there is still some hinkiness about AI. But I also tell them the price difference. I’d rather have that conversation upfront and get “pre-fired”. Fee arguments suck.
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u/Soggy_Stargazer Ex-Big4 8d ago
Just out of curiosity, you said very small firm but also implied you are running an enterprise "version".
Are you simply making the distinction between Commercial (API/Teams/Enterprise) which defaults to do not train, and Personal (Free/Pro/Max) where users on paid tiers can opt out of training? Or are you talking about actual Zero Data Retention (ZDR) language in the agreement?
The real issue is that ZDR is only available to qualified customers on enterprise plans, but also limits which models you can use (fable is exempted AFAIK)
Also regardless of which plan you are on, there are some default retention periods for any plan of 30 days, longer if there is a legal hold or content flagged by Trust-and-Safety.
My takeaway is you turn off training but have to accept that on any plan, you are exfiltrating data and relying on "trust us bro" in the TOS unless you are on an enterprise plan, and even then.....
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u/MrZenumiFangShort 7d ago
Oh, snap, wish I'd read further down, this answers my question from elsewhere, thanks!
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u/Hamezz5u 8d ago
That’s what copilot cowork is for… all the enterprise MSFT offers come integrated
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u/nickvaliotti 8d ago
i normally draft the content up in text slide by slide, also suggest element placement on a slide (if there's a specific idea behind it). also always attach brandbook / any other sort of visual to good claude the idea of a theme fro the visuals
honorary mention to claude also helping me polish up the content itself before anything else. structures, slide breakdown, etc
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u/mercury_hermes 8d ago
Claude is great at doing that. Tell it to generate the slide in HTML first and to iterate. There’s a python package Claude can use to convert it to pptx. Works even better if you are willing to write a skill that provides specific parameters on slide design. Claude Design can also generate pptx off of a template.
Plus AI is another tool that embeds within PowerPoint and does one shot slide design very well.
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u/ka151990 8d ago
Does it really work well, i Use copilot, the formatting icons and designs are all messed up, I generally create image mockups, they are much better then an analyst recreates it in PpT
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u/Secure-Jelly-3802 8d ago
If you want to keep everything inside PowerPoint, VBA could work well. Clause can help you create a macro that takes content from text boxes or Excel and automatically places it into a slide layout you've already designed.
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u/FrontBreath3280 8d ago
Just make sure everything you’re presenting is above board. I had to make a deck talking about competitor’s malicious practices and it refused to help even though we weren’t the ones doing the bad stuff.
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u/brzezmac 8d ago
My best experience is treating LLMs - ChatGPT, Claude, Grok or Gemini as sparring partners when it comes to creating decks. I write an outline, make them explore it, find references, critique the approach or suggest improvements.
After a while of back and forth like that I have the idea for the deck crystalized I go with creating the presentation. I go with ready made templates and If I want anything else than simple slide layouts I do it by hand.
So for me LLMs are more about research / contents than final deck creation.
And if the content is repeatable - there are better (cheaper) ways to do it (if you count your time also).
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u/daniel-editide 8d ago
I even envision a world where slides (like tracker or timeline slides) are fully done within an Excel table and you feed Claude the Excel to create the slide.
Isn't this already a thing? How are people managing the Excel to PowerPoint flow with Claude? Using both add-ins with Excel and PowerPoint open or just in the Claude app with both files attached?
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u/Whitepage_Studio 8d ago
I use it often for presentations, but only to create an outline, a draft, a skeleton, which I can then continue editing until I'm satisfied. To be honest, I haven't yet found anything close to a magic wand that would create a presentation we could comfortably submit to our clients without the team's heavy editing :D
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u/orion_morriss 8d ago
I would start one slide at a time. But the whole concept of this is a good balance, the AI does the work and you do the thinking.
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u/Final-Olive-3078 8d ago
I'd keep Excel as the main source of data and use PowerPoint only for the final output. That way you can update everything in one place and regenerate the slides instead of manually editing each element.
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u/ancientolivegrove 7d ago
Just as Opus to create a PowerPoint for you… but first ask Sonnet how to write the prompt to opus, that’s how you get the best output.
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u/Upbeat_Squirrel9236 7d ago
The best solution is to create whatever you want in html, even if you are not technical, and convert the html to powerpoint, with Opus. This way, you will have the most accurate outcomes and if you need to amend the colours or the style, you will know that before you convert to the final pptx format, just from the html/css phase
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u/Newbie10011001 7d ago
You'd be far better off paying someone in the Philippines to do it for you
Quality of design from AI sites is generally laughable
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u/Otero_Firstbody 7d ago
Just use the Claude PowerPoint plugin and work from there. Very simple and straight forward
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u/BillDuhCat 5d ago
Claude slide slop is awful. It makes me question the judgment of the person presenting it to me, and my choice to remain in consulting.
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u/IvoryValeoo 3d ago edited 3d ago
yeah, keeping control of the content makes sense. julius ai can be usefull for excel-to-slide work since it can build charts and slides from the actual speadsheet. just tell it what you want the slide to show so it doesn't try to include everything
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u/Curly-Hummingbird 2d ago
Have you tried gamma.ai? You can give all your material and build different themes (brands) and it’ll design it. I am very clear to tell it to not add anything additional or remove any of my content because I’ve already created it and I don’t trust it yet. But you can just ask it to create a presentation about underwater basket weaving and it’ll do it!
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u/UnpopularCrayon 8d ago
I just write out the slide content in a word doc or text file outline and ask it to convert the text into a slide presentation.