talkcraft

TalkCraft

Overview

Use this skill when the user needs a presentation strategy before slides, a stronger talk structure, a ruthless outline review, speaker notes, rehearsal support, or a deck rewrite grounded in presentation craft rather than generic slide advice.

This skill distills Winston-style presentation principles into an agent workflow that works across Codex, Claude, and other instruction-following agents. It produces strategy first, artifacts second.

Use When

Trigger this skill for requests such as:

• "Help me prepare a keynote."
• "Rewrite this deck for an executive audience."
• "Audit my thesis defense."
• "Turn rough notes into a talk outline."
• "Prepare speaker notes and Q&A."
• "Make this technical presentation clearer."

Do not use this skill for purely visual slide polishing with no narrative problem. In that case, use a design or slides skill after the storyline is stable.

Operating Modes

Choose one mode early and say which one you are using:

1. Design Build a talk from scratch from topic, audience, and time.
2. Audit Critique an existing outline, deck, or speaker script against the rubric.
3. Rewrite Keep the core content, replace the structure and delivery plan.
4. Rehearse Build trim plans, speaker notes, likely questions, and recovery moves.

Core Outputs

Every serious run should leave behind most of these artifacts:

1. Audience and objective statement.
2. One-sentence promise.
3. One-line slogan or governing idea.
4. Time budget.
5. Section fences with explicit transitions.
6. Evidence plan: example, story, demo, board work, or visual for each fence.
7. Opening move.
8. Closing recap.
9. Q&A prep.
10. Rehearsal risks and next iteration.

Workflow

1. Frame Mission

Extract or infer:

• audience
• audience prior knowledge
• decision or learning goal
• allowed duration
• delivery mode: talk, lecture, pitch, review, defense, briefing
• artifact needed: outline, notes, slide plan, full deck copy, rehearsal memo