What does this skill do, and when should you use it?
This is the PowerPoint-handling skill inside DeepTutor's built-in skill collection, located at deeptutor/skills/builtin/pptx/SKILL.md. It teaches the model to operate on .pptx files (ZIPs of XML parts) via the preinstalled python-pptx library: extracting slide text and speaker notes, building decks from outlines, run-level edits that preserve formatting, in-place image replacement, generating tables and charts, and exporting to PDF/images through LibreOffice. Raw OOXML surgery is a documented last resort for features the library can't express. It requires a shell sandbox to run Python code, which is on by default in every DeepTutor deployment shape.
Read: iterates slides, placeholders, shapes, table cells, and notes to output structured text. Create: builds decks from an outline against a template or default layouts, writing titles, bullets, text boxes, and pictures. Edit: replaces text at the run level to keep inline formatting, deletes surplus shapes, swaps image-part bytes in place, and generates tables and clustered-column charts. Design: applies explicit rules for palette, layout variety, and type scale, then demands a post-export inspection for overflow and overlap. Export: runs soffice --headless to convert to PDF and pdftoppm to JPEG for visual review; legacy .ppt must be converted via soffice first. Fallback: for features python-pptx can't do (exact-fidelity duplication, gradient fills), it edits OOXML directly with lxml or zipfile, listing critical invariants around [Content_Types].xml, relationships, and unique IDs. Before finishing, it reopens the output and asserts slide count and key text to catch corruption.
- Teachers and corporate users who need to batch-generate slide decks for weekly reports, lectures, or training materials from a Markdown-style outline
- Content teams archiving or indexing large numbers of existing decks who need slide text and speaker notes extracted
- Template-filling workflows: replacing {{NAME}}-style placeholder text across a .pptx template and swapping a logo image in place
- Analysts who need data tables and clustered column charts generated directly on slides
- Users exporting decks to PDF or per-slide images for review, publishing, or viewing without PowerPoint
- Anyone receiving legacy .ppt files that must be converted to editable .pptx (requires LibreOffice locally)
How do you install this skill?
- This is a static source review; no code was executed. Claims such as 'python-pptx preinstalled' and default template layout indices are unverified at runtime.
- PDF/image export depends on host-side LibreOffice and pdftoppm; when absent, export is unavailable and the skill will not install them — confirm the environment beforehand.
- The skill runs Python via exec and spawns external processes via subprocess, overwriting output files; watch for same-named files in the workspace.
- The repository publisher is not verified by the FollowSkills registry and is treated as unknown; the skill has no independent version number or changelog.
- No specific guidance covers rendering of Chinese content (fonts, wrapping, overflow); manually inspect decks containing Chinese after generation.
- Shell / CLI
- Local filesystem
Python with python-pptxLibreOffice (soffice) for PDF/image export and .ppt conversionpdftoppm (poppler) for image rendering
The skill ships bundled with DeepTutor and needs no separate installation. Install DeepTutor itself: pip install -U deeptutor, then deeptutor init and deeptutor start; or clone https://github.com/HKUDS/DeepTutor.git from source and pip install -e .. The skill file lives at deeptutor/skills/builtin/pptx/SKILL.md in the repo. python-pptx is preinstalled; PDF/image export requires LibreOffice (soffice) on the system. Steps for using it as a standalone Agent Skill in other clients are not documented in the source material.
tmp="$(mktemp -d)"
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/HKUDS/DeepTutor.git "$tmp"
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills
cp -R "$tmp/deeptutor/skills/builtin/pptx" ~/.claude/skills/
rm -rf "$tmp"Generated from the source repository and skill path; it copies only this skill's folder. If the author's install steps above differ, follow those first. To scope it to one project, replace ~/.claude/skills with that project's .claude/skills.
How do you use this skill?
Once installed, send your agent any of these to trigger it:
- Generate a 5-slide .pptx from this outline
- Extract the title and notes from every slide of deck.pptx
- Replace {{NAME}} in the template with Frank and swap the slide-1 logo for new.png
The skill declares requires: sandbox: shell; the model sends complete Python source through the exec tool. Trigger: whenever a .pptx or .ppt file is an input or output, or the user mentions a deck, slides, or a presentation. Example prompts: "Generate a 5-slide .pptx from this outline", "Extract the title and notes from every slide of deck.pptx", "Replace {{NAME}} in the template with Frank and swap the slide-1 logo for new.png". After generation the skill requires reopening the file to verify slide count and key text; for visual checks it exports to PDF/images first. If soffice is missing, export is skipped and honestly reported rather than installed on the fly.
What are this skill's strengths and limitations?
- Highly specific instructions with complete runnable code samples covering read, create, edit, design, export, and OOXML fallback
- Documents easy-to-miss pitfalls: run-level editing to preserve formatting, same-encoding image replacement, and OOXML corruption invariants
- Built-in verification: reopen the output to assert structure, and inspect rendered slides for overflow/overlap before declaring done
- Honest about failure modes: reports missing soffice instead of faking a successful export
- PDF/image export and .ppt conversion depend on LibreOffice; functionality degrades when it's absent
- python-pptx cannot open legacy binary .ppt; conversion is mandatory
- Visual quality depends on how well the model executes the design guidance; wrong image-encoding bytes can corrupt the file
- No standalone test suite or cross-platform validation evidence for this skill is provided in the source
How does this skill compare with similar options?
Side by side with related skills; every score comes from the same FSRS standard.
| Skill | FS score | Stars | Last updated | License |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DeepTutor pptx Skill this page | 58 · Recommended | ★ 41k | 18d ago | Apache-2.0 |
| PPTX Presentation Skill (Open Cowork) | 69 · Recommended | ★ 2.2k | 12d ago | MIT |
| Gorden PPT Skill | 61 · Recommended | ★ 3.6k | 4mo ago | NOASSERTION |
| Headless PowerPoint Author ✓ Anthropic · Official | 52 · Use with care | ★ 40k | 1mo ago | Apache-2.0 |
| PowerPoint Template Skill Builder ✓ Anthropic · Official | 51 · Use with care | ★ 40k | 1mo ago | Apache-2.0 |
Compared with having a model emit binary files or hand-write OOXML, this skill routes structure through python-pptx and drops to ZIP surgery only when necessary, sharply reducing file-corruption risk. DeepTutor's sibling office skills (docx, pdf, xlsx) follow the same pattern of model-written Python executed in a sandbox — they are family, not competitors.
How did FollowSkills review this skill?
The skill declares only sandbox: shell, executes python-pptx code via exec to read/write pptx files; no network exfiltration, no credential access, no destructive defaults; it instructs honest reporting when export tools are missing rather than installing them, and the zip-surgery example uses defusedxml. Deductions: subprocess calls to soffice/pdftoppm run external processes without explicit user confirmation, and rollback behavior (overwriting existing files) is not documented.
Internally self-consistent with clear code paths and strong failure-feedback design: missing soffice/pdftoppm is reported honestly, outputs are re-opened to catch corruption, template leftovers are checked, and image replacement warns about encoding mismatches. Deducted for no committed runnable tests or boundary-case inventory specific to this skill path; static review caps this at 10.
Trigger conditions are precise (any pptx/ppt input/output or slide mention), boundaries are clear (.ppt unsupported by python-pptx, export requires LibreOffice, admits when visual inspection is unavailable). Deductions: no mention of Chinese font/layout rendering pitfalls, and export fails where LibreOffice/pdftoppm is unavailable with no alternative path offered.
Frontmatter includes name/description/tags/requires; docs are well layered (read/create/edit/export/OOXML escape hatch/verify); Apache-2.0 license is clear; python-pptx dependency is pinned in pyproject.toml (>=1.0.0). Deductions: the skill itself has no version or changelog, no FAQ, and skill-level maintenance ownership/update path is only inferable from the repository level.
Code examples are complete and directly usable across read/create/edit/charts/export/zip surgery, with strong self-verification steps; marginal value over hand-writing OOXML is clear. Deducted for lack of verifiable representative output evidence (samples or test results) and because design guidance depends on model execution; static review caps this at 7.
Claims (python-pptx preinstalled, default template layout indices) are partially checkable at source level (dependency confirmed in pyproject), and facts are mostly separated from inference. Deducted for absence of third-party execution evidence, committed tests covering the skill's key paths, or multi-source corroboration.
Open a dimension to read why it scored that way
Evidence confidence：Low — Mostly static review, author material or a limited demo; useful for discovery, not high-risk decisions.
See the full review method →