Presentation Outliner

The deck is the last step, not the first. This skill builds a slide-by-slide outline — assertion titles, one idea per slide, evidence named — before anyone opens a slide tool, because rearranging an outline costs seconds and rearranging a designed deck costs an afternoon. The finished outline reads top to bottom as a complete argument, which is the test most decks quietly fail.

When to use this skill

• Someone has a topic, an audience, and a time limit, and needs a deck structured
• An existing deck rambles and needs its spine rebuilt before anyone redesigns slides
• A pitch, review, or all-hands talk must land one specific decision or takeaway
• Speaker notes need drafting against an agreed structure
• The user asks "how many slides do I need?" — the honest answer starts here

Workflow

1. Fix four parameters first: the audience and what they already believe, the occasion, the hard time limit, and the takeaway — the one sentence you want repeated in the corridor afterwards.
2. Budget slides before writing any: roughly one content slide per minute of talk time, and half that for discussion-heavy rooms. A twenty-minute slot gets twelve to fifteen slides, not forty.
3. Choose the spine to match the job. Persuading: situation, complication, resolution, ask. Reporting: headline, evidence, implications, next steps. Teaching: why it matters, the concept, a worked example, practice. Name the chosen spine at the top of the outline.
4. Write every slide title as a full-sentence assertion. "Churn concentrates in month two" earns its slide; "Churn analysis" is a filing label. If you cannot write the assertion, you do not yet know what the slide is for — cut it or split it.
5. Under each title, name the single exhibit that proves the assertion: one chart, one table, one quote, one demo. Two exhibits means two slides.
6. Mark each slide Tell, Show, or Ask, then check the mix: a pitch that is all Tell gets no decision; a review that is all Show gets no direction.
7. Run the squint test: read the titles alone, in order. They must work as a standalone argument with the slide bodies deleted. Reorder and rewrite until they do.
8. Draft two-line speaker notes per slide: the opening sentence, and the transition into the next assertion.

Output format

Deck: <working title> — <audience>, <time limit>
Takeaway: <the corridor sentence>
Spine: <situation-complication-resolution | headline-evidence | teaching>

1. <Assertion title>              [Tell]  Exhibit: none — verbal setup
2. <Assertion title>              [Show]  Exhibit: <chart of X against Y>
3. <Assertion title>              [Show]  Exhibit: <table, three rows>
   ...
N. <The ask, stated as a slide>   [Ask]   Exhibit: <decision options, side by side>

Notes per slide: <first sentence spoken> / <transition out>

Quality bar

• One idea per slide, and the title asserts it in a full sentence with a verb in it.
• The titles read in sequence tell the entire story to someone who never sees the bodies.
• Every claim slide names its evidence; every evidence slide supports a named claim.
• The ask slide exists, is explicit, and lands while there is still time left to discuss it.
• The slide count fits the time budget with room for questions — a deck that runs long steals the discussion that was the point of presenting at all.