Deck Outline First Skill

Decks built slide-first inherit the tool's failure mode: hours of formatting sunk into slides whose argument was never designed, discovered broken in rehearsal (or worse, in the room). The outline-first discipline is outline-before-prose for the slide medium: every slide is one headline sentence — a claim, not a topic ("Churn concentrates in month two" not "Churn Analysis") — the headlines read in sequence as the complete argument, and the skim test (read only the headlines — does the case hold?) runs before any slideware opens. Slides then become evidence for their headlines, which is all slides were ever supposed to be.

What This Skill Produces

• The header — audience, the decision/ask, the time slot (which caps the slide count)
• The headline outline — one claim-sentence per slide, in argument order
• The evidence notes — per slide: what will carry the claim (the chart, the number, the quote — noted, not built)
• The skim test + build rules — the headlines-only read-through, and the rules that keep the build faithful

Required Inputs

Ask for these if not provided:

• The deck's job — what the audience should decide or do at the end (meeting-prep-pack walk-away logic applies to the presenter too); decks without asks are documentaries
• The audience and the time slot — 10 minutes with executives is 6–8 slides; the slot arithmetic caps ambition before the outline overcommits
• The material — the findings/evidence available; headlines claim only what evidence can carry (evidence-grading keeps the claims honest)
• The reviewer — who would restructure this in review; they see the outline, not the finished deck