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Reverse-engineer a PowerPoint design system and build a matching clean template

Session from clean-slides-sessions on Hugging Face by thomasmustier · MIT · condensed by Coders Talk

1h 53msession
1interventions
by library · 2d
pptxpython-pptxxmlGitBash
GOAL

Extract a formal design system from two existing PowerPoint presentations, then apply that design system to produce a reusable clean template PPTX.

  1. Prompt · +0
    Review two example PowerPoint presentations in ./data and infer the design system used for templates and slide documents.
  2. Agent did · +0m
    Unzipped both .pptx files as XML archives, compared themes, layouts, masters, fonts, colors, positions and produced a first design system summary.
  3. Break · 1h 04m away, not counted
  4. Prompt · +2m
    Corrected and refined the color palette, fonts, sizes, and described the header/table formatting from an example slide image.
  5. Agent did · +3m
    Wrote DESIGN-SYSTEM.md, generated a color palette chart, then dug into placeholder text box spacing and named master elements (moons, legends, sticker, grid, on-page tracker) to fill out the doc.
  6. Prompt · +14m
    Pointed out that TopLine/BottomLine elements vary by layout (left/right variants, different widths) and asked for exact measurements per layout.
  7. Agent did · +15m
    Extracted precise line widths/positions per layout fraction, updated the doc, removed 'Pactio' branding, committed and pushed to GitHub, then added an MIT license.
  8. Break · 3h 01m away, not counted
  9. Agent did · +20m
    Built a gap analysis comparing the Tiber template to the design system, then stripped all slides from a copy of Tiber and rewrote theme colors/metadata to create a clean template pptx.
  10. Fail · +1h 1m
    The stripped-down template with zero/blank slides came back from PowerPoint as corrupted, even after re-saving via python-pptx.
  11. Intervention · +1h 31m
    Reported that PowerPoint's repair also failed, ruling out a PowerPoint-only glitch and forcing a different fix approach.
    Why: I needed to make clear the file itself was broken, not just a PowerPoint quirk, so we'd stop re-saving the same bad structure.
  12. Agent did · +1h 31m
    Kept all original slides intact while only changing theme colors and metadata, confirmed it opened, then used python-pptx to properly delete all slides and add one blank Default-layout slide.
  13. Break · 3h 46m away, not counted
  14. Agent did · +1h 52m
    Moved the template, design system doc and color palette into a slide-template/ directory, wrote an AGENTS.md guide, and committed the reorganisation.
  15. Outcome · +1h 53m
    Delivered a working clean-slides-template.pptx (1 slide, 27 layouts) plus DESIGN-SYSTEM.md and AGENTS.md, organized in slide-template/, committed across multiple pushes to github.com/tmustier/clean-slides.
VERDICT

Next time I'd start by asking the agent to validate any pptx it produces by actually opening it (via the PowerPoint MCP tool) rather than trusting raw XML surgery — the corrupted file cost the most time. What actually worked was keeping all original slides intact while only touching theme colors, confirming that opened cleanly, and then using python-pptx's proper slide-deletion API instead of manually stripping XML nodes.

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