Best Claude Code skills for a slide deck: art, not layout

The one thing the agent cannot do

Ask Claude Code for a deck and it will produce one: an outline, the file, the speaker notes, the structure of an argument. Every part of that is text work, which is what it is good at. Then you open the result and every slide is type on a plain background, because the agent has no image model and cannot make a picture. That gap is the entire reason this article exists, and it is filled by adding a catalog of image services to the same session.

Note the ratio. A slide is 16:9, the catalog generates 16:9, so this image goes onto a slide at full bleed with nothing cropped. That is a small thing that saves a step every single time, and it is the opposite of the Instagram case, where the platform's ratio is not one the catalog offers and every image needs a trim.

Making the second image match

A deck needs more than one picture, and the second one has to look like it belongs to the first. Same technique as anywhere else: pass the title image back as a reference, describe a different subject, and say nothing about the style at all.

That is the result you want from a deck image set: a viewer should not be able to tell that the two slides were made in separate runs. Nothing in the second prompt mentioned blue, teal, gradients, or glass; all of it came from the reference.

What the cheaper model did differently

The catalog's cheapest image model runs at $0.10 per run, so it is a fair question whether the difference is worth paying for on a deck nobody will study closely. We sent the identical brief and the identical reference to it.

Neither behaviour is wrong. If you want a set that repeats a motif deliberately — the same shape recurring on every divider — the more literal reading is useful. If you want variety inside one visual language, it is not. Knowing which you are getting is worth one test run before you commission twelve slides, and at these prices that test is the cheapest part of the deck.

What a deck's worth of art costs

The comparison worth making is not against a cheaper model, it is against the alternative: a stock subscription, or an afternoon of searching for images that nearly fit. A dozen images made to your brief, in one visual language, priced before they run, is a different kind of purchase.

Four rules that keep a deck coherent

1. Keep text out of the image

   Ask for empty space where the title goes and set the type in your layout tool. Image models spell badly, and type baked into a picture cannot be edited when the title changes an hour before the meeting.

2. Make the title image first, then reference it

   It is the style guide for everything after it. If it is wrong, fix it before generating anything else, because every later image inherits whatever it establishes.

3. Generate at 16:9

   It is the slide ratio, so nothing needs cropping. If a slide is going to be viewed on a phone as a PDF, generate that one at a different ratio rather than trimming the wide version.

4. Test the reference behaviour once

   Run one section image before committing to a set, and check whether the model took the style or the objects. One run answers it.

Running it from Claude Code

Building the deck file, writing the outline, and placing the images are all things the agent already does locally at no charge; the Skill installed with the CLI adds the image generation capability that makes the artwork. Every run is priced first, and an empty wallet stops the job before anything is charged. If a slide needs a chart rather than an illustration, that is data work the agent should do itself — an image model will draw something that looks like a chart and means nothing.

Set it up once

npm install --global @actionway/cli@latest
actionway init
mkdir -p "$HOME/.claude/skills"
cp -R "$HOME/.actionway/skill/actionway" "$HOME/.claude/skills/actionway"

You need Node.js 20 or newer and an Actionway account. Codex users copy the same folder into ~/.codex/skills/actionway instead, and both routes reach the same catalog and the same wallet — the get started page lists the steps per client side by side.