frontend-slides

Frontend Slides

A coding-agent skill for creating stunning HTML presentations — from scratch or by converting PowerPoint files. It is packaged as a Claude Code plugin, and the core SKILL.md can also be read by other coding agents with filesystem and shell access.

🎬 Live demo decks · 📺 Video tutorial · ⚡ Install in 30 seconds

🔀 Fork notice — The original repository lives at zarazhangrui/frontend-slides, and all credit for the original skill goes to @zarazhangrui. This fork extends the skill with 88 layout presets — fixed, proven slide compositions — so that models other than Claude can also generate beautiful presentations.

The Problem This Fork Solves

Here is the uncomfortable truth about AI-generated presentations:

Every model that isn't Claude fails at beautiful slides. Ask GPT, Gemini, or a local model to build a deck and you get the same wreckage every time: text spilling off the stage, headings and body copy fighting for the same space, one slide centered and the next inexplicably left-aligned, a wall of bullets where a composition should be. These models can write the content just fine. They cannot compose it.

And Claude — the one model that gets it right — is too expensive to use for it. A full deck means generating thousands of lines of hand-crafted HTML and CSS, slide after slide, with design reasoning on every one. At premium token prices, making presentations this way regularly is a luxury, not a workflow.

So you're stuck: the models you can afford can't design, and the model that can design you can't afford.

The fix: stop asking models to design. Ask them to fill in a design.

That is what layout-presets/ does. It's a pack of 88 style-agnostic structural blueprints — opening, section, list, stats, quote, comparison, timeline, image, video, and closing slides — where each preset fixes where everything sits and how big it is on the 1920×1080 stage, while the design system (colors, fonts, decoration) stays swappable. The model no longer improvises layout; it slots content into a composition that already works. Cheaper, non-Claude models suddenly produce decks that look deliberate — and Claude burns far fewer tokens getting there.

📺 Watch the Walkthrough & Tutorial

New here? This beginner-friendly video walks you through the whole thing, start to finish.

▶️ Watch on YouTube → (beginner-friendly walkthrough and tutorial)

What This Does

Frontend Slides helps non-designers create beautiful web presentations without knowing CSS or JavaScript. It uses a "show, don't tell" approach: instead of asking you to describe your aesthetic preferences in words, it generates visual previews and lets you pick what you like.

Here is a deck about the skill, made through the skill:

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/ef57333e-f879-432a-afb9-180388982478

Key Features

• Single File, No Build Step — Self-contained HTML styled with Tailwind CSS utility classes (via CDN script). No npm, no build tools.
• Tailwind Styling Conventions — All layout/type/color styling lives in utility classes; raw CSS is confined to three labeled blocks (stage mechanics, design tokens, choreography), so everything stays traceable.
• Visual Style Discovery — Can't articulate design preferences? No problem. Pick from generated visual previews.
• PPT Conversion — Convert existing PowerPoint files to web, preserving all images and content.
• Anti-AI-Slop — Curated distinctive styles that avoid generic AI aesthetics (bye-bye, purple gradients on white).
• Bold Template Pack — Optional design-forward templates from beautiful-html-templates, loaded progressively so safe presets still work as the default fallback.
• Layout Presets (this fork) — 88 style-agnostic structural blueprints that fix slide composition, so any model — not just Claude — can generate beautiful, consistent decks cheaply.
• Production Quality — Accessible, fixed 16:9, well-commented code you can customize.

Installation

Via Claude Code Custom Marketplace Source

Install directly from this public GitHub repo. Run these as two separate Claude Code messages; do not paste both lines into the prompt at once.

/plugin marketplace add https://github.com/dreamid27/frontend-slides

After that finishes, run:

/plugin install frontend-slides@frontend-slides

Use the HTTPS URL. The shorter dreamid27/frontend-slides form may make Claude Code try SSH, which can fail if GitHub is not already in your known_hosts file.

Then use it by typing /frontend-slides:frontend-slides in Claude Code. Claude Code namespaces plugin-installed skills as /plugin-name:skill-name.

Claude Code Manual Installation

Copy the skill files to your Claude Code skills directory:

# Create the skill directory
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/frontend-slides/scripts

# Copy the user-facing skill files
cp SKILL.md STYLE_PRESETS.md viewport-base.css html-template.md animation-patterns.md ~/.claude/skills/frontend-slides/
cp -R bold-template-pack layout-presets ~/.claude/skills/frontend-slides/
cp scripts/extract-pptx.py scripts/deploy.sh scripts/export-pdf.sh ~/.claude/skills/frontend-slides/scripts/

Or clone directly:

git clone https://github.com/dreamid27/frontend-slides.git ~/.claude/skills/frontend-slides

Then use it by typing /frontend-slides in Claude Code. Standalone skills are not namespaced.

Other Coding Agents

Agents such as Codex, Kimi Code, OpenCode, Gemini CLI, or other local coding assistants can use the same core skill. The simplest path is to send the agent this GitHub repo link and ask it to use the Frontend Slides skill:

https://github.com/dreamid27/frontend-slides

If the agent can read GitHub repos or browse files, it should start from SKILL.md and load only the referenced support files it needs:

• STYLE_PRESETS.md
• viewport-base.css
• html-template.md
• animation-patterns.md
• bold-template-pack/
• layout-presets/
• scripts/

Some agents can also install the skill for you if they have filesystem access and a known local skills directory. If not, they can still follow SKILL.md directly for the current session.

The Claude Code plugin gives Claude Code a custom marketplace-source install flow and /frontend-slides:frontend-slides command. Other agents usually do not use that command surface.

Usage

Create a New Presentation

/frontend-slides:frontend-slides

> "I want to create a pitch deck for my AI startup"

If installed manually as a standalone Claude Code skill, use /frontend-slides instead.

In non-Claude agents, ask the agent to use the Frontend Slides skill and point it at this repo or SKILL.md.

The skill will:

1. Ask about your content (slides, messages, images)
2. Generate 3 visual style previews for you to compare, inferring the vibe from your brief unless you already named one
3. Let you pick the visual direction
4. Create the full presentation in your chosen style
5. Open it in your browser

Convert a PowerPoint

/frontend-slides:frontend-slides

> "Convert my presentation.pptx to a web slideshow"

The skill will:

1. Extract all text, images, and notes from your PPT
2. Show you the extracted content for confirmation
3. Let you pick a visual style
4. Generate an HTML presentation with all your original assets

Included Styles

Dark Themes

• Bold Signal — Confident, high-impact, vibrant card on dark
• Electric Studio — Clean, professional, split-panel
• Creative Voltage — Energetic, retro-modern, electric blue + neon
• Dark Botanical — Elegant, sophisticated, warm accents

Light Themes

• Notebook Tabs — Editorial, organized, paper with colorful tabs
• Pastel Geometry — Friendly, approachable, vertical pills
• Split Pastel — Playful, modern, two-color vertical split
• Vintage Editorial — Witty, personality-driven, geometric shapes

Specialty

• Neon Cyber — Futuristic, particle backgrounds, neon glow
• Terminal Green — Developer-focused, hacker aesthetic
• Swiss Modern — Minimal, Bauhaus-inspired, geometric
• Paper & Ink — Literary, drop caps, pull quotes

Bold Template Pack

The skill also includes 34 optional bold design systems from beautiful-html-templates, such as Neo-Grid Bold, Editorial Tri-Tone, Creative Mode, Broadside, Signal, and Vellum.

During style discovery, the preview set is:

• 1 safe preset from STYLE_PRESETS.md
• at least 1 bold template option from bold-template-pack/selection-index.json
• 1 wildcard option, either another bold template or a self-generated custom design

The agent reads the compact bold template index first, then loads only the shortlisted candidates' small preview.md cards for title-slide previews. It loads the full design.md for exactly one bold template only after the user picks that template for the final deck. If the user picks a custom wildcard, the agent expands that preview's own utility classes and layout system into the full deck.

Bold Template Gallery

Frontend Slides can now draw from the 34 bold design systems in beautiful-html-templates. Three screenshots per template show how each visual system handles different slide layouts. Click any template name to inspect the source template library.

Soft Editorial

Cormorant Garamond serif on warm paper with sage, blush, and lemon accents.

Editorial Forest

Forest green, dusty pink, and warm cream in Source Serif 4 — quiet, intentional quarterly-review aesthetic.

Pin & Paper

Yellow paper with safety-pin illustrations, ink-blue handwritten Caveat, paper-grain texture.

Sakura Chroma

Vintage Japanese cassette-package aesthetic: cream paper, diagonal rainbow ribbons, condensed bold type, JIS-style spec checkboxes.

Stencil & Tablet

Bone paper with stencil-cut headlines and a six-color earth palette: archaeology meets brand.

Cobalt Grid

Electric cobalt italic serifs on a graph-paper canvas, anchored by stair-stepped pixel-glitch decorations and slim hairline rules.

Vellum

Deep navy canvas with warm-yellow italic Cormorant serifs and a single dusty teal accent. A quiet, scholarly aesthetic.

Emerald Editorial

Magazine-cover business deck: emerald + navy + paper with double-rule masthead ornaments and a heavy Bodoni-style display serif.

Neo-Grid Bold

Editorial neo-brutalism with a single neon yellow accent on off-white paper.

Editorial Tri-Tone

Three-color editorial system: dusty pink, mustard cream, and deep burgundy, set in Bricolage + Instrument Serif.

Creative Mode

Cream paper canvas with confident multi-color (green, pink, orange, yellow) accents and Archivo Black display.

Monochrome

Ivory ledger paper with all-black type; Lora serif headlines, Jost body, no color at all.

People's Platform (Block & Bold)

Activist poster energy: blue, orange, red on cream, with Alfa Slab + Caveat Brush.

Pink Script — After Hours

Black canvas, hot pink accent, pearl-cream paper, Instrument Serif headlines: late-night editorial luxury.

8-Bit Orbit

Pixel-art neon arcade aesthetic on a deep navy void.

BlockFrame

Neobrutalist deck with pastel-neon color blocks and chunky black borders.

Blue Professional

Cream paper background with electric cobalt blue accents; clean modern professional.

Bold Poster

Editorial poster aesthetic with massive Shrikhand display and a single fire-engine red accent.

Broadside

Dark editorial canvas with a single fire orange accent and bilingual Latin/Chinese type stack.

Capsule

Modular pill-shaped cards on warm bone with a full pastel-pop palette.

Cartesian

Quiet warm-neutral palette with classical Playfair serifs; tasteful and unhurried.

Coral

Cream and coral on near-black, set in oversized Bebas Neue.

Daisy Days

Cheerful pastel deck with hand-drawn daisies, stars, and rainbows. Friendly, soft, and warm.

Grove

Forest-green canvas with cream type, classical Playfair serifs, and a single rust accent.

Mat

Dark sage canvas with bone paper and burnt-orange accent; mid-century modern with wood undertones.

Playful

Sun-warm peach background with Syne display: a friendly indie launch deck.

Raw Grid

Neo-brutalist deck with thick borders, offset shadows, and a pink/sage/ink palette.

Retro Windows

Windows 95 chrome: gray title bars, MS Sans Serif, pixel typography, full nostalgia.

Retro Zine

Beige paper with green accent and Bebas Neue + Caveat: a riso-printed zine in HTML form.

Scatterbrain

Post-it inspired: pastel sticky notes, Caveat handwriting, Shrikhand and Zilla Slab type stack.

Signal

Deep navy canvas with bone paper and a single muted-gold accent; institutional with quiet weight.

Studio

Black canvas with electric-yellow type; high-voltage design studio aesthetic.

Biennale Yellow

Solar yellow on warm parchment with deep indigo serif and atmospheric sun-glow gradients. Dutch-editorial poster energy.

Long Table

Warm cream and rust-red supper-club aesthetic with bold uppercase grotesk headlines, italic Fraunces, and pill-shaped outlined buttons.

Architecture

This skill uses progressive disclosure — the main SKILL.md is a workflow map, with supporting files loaded on-demand only when needed:

File	Purpose	Loaded When
SKILL.md	Core workflow and rules	Always (skill invocation)
STYLE_PRESETS.md	12 curated visual presets	Phase 2 (style selection)
bold-template-pack/selection-index.json	Compact bold template metadata for candidate selection	Phase 2 (style selection)
bold-template-pack/templates/*/preview.md	Tiny style cards for shortlisted bold previews	Phase 2 after shortlisting
bold-template-pack/templates/*/design.md	Full design system for the selected bold template	Phase 3 after user selection
layout-presets/**/layout.md	88 style-agnostic slide composition blueprints	Phase 3 (generation, per slide)
viewport-base.css	Mandatory stage-mechanics CSS (the only raw-CSS layer)	Phase 3 (generation)
html-template.md	HTML structure, Tailwind config pattern, JS features	Phase 3 (generation)
animation-patterns.md	Animation reference (Tailwind + choreography CSS)	Phase 3 (generation)
scripts/extract-pptx.py	PPT content extraction	Phase 4 (conversion)
scripts/deploy.sh	Deploy to Vercel	Phase 6 (sharing)
scripts/export-pdf.sh	Export slides to PDF	Phase 6 (sharing)

Maintenance-only source metadata and regeneration helpers live outside the user-facing skill package. Normal users do not need them.

This design follows agent-skill best practices: give the agent a map first, then reveal only the specific files needed for the current choice.

Philosophy

This skill was born from the belief that:

1. You don't need to be a designer to make beautiful things. You just need to react to what you see.

2. Dependencies are debt. A single HTML file will work in 10 years. A React project from 2019? Good luck.

3. Generic is forgettable. Every presentation should feel custom-crafted, not template-generated.

4. Comments are kindness. Code should explain itself to future-you (or anyone else who opens it).

Sharing Your Presentations

After creating a presentation, the skill offers two ways to share it:

Deploy to a Live URL

One command deploys your slides to a permanent, shareable URL that works on any device — phones, tablets, laptops:

bash scripts/deploy.sh ./my-deck/
# or
bash scripts/deploy.sh ./presentation.html

Uses Vercel (free tier). The skill walks you through signup and login if it's your first time.

Export to PDF

Convert your slides to a PDF for email, Slack, Notion, or printing:

bash scripts/export-pdf.sh ./my-deck/index.html
bash scripts/export-pdf.sh ./presentation.html ./output.pdf

Uses Playwright to screenshot each slide at 1920×1080 and combine into a PDF. Installs automatically if needed. Animations are not preserved (it's a static snapshot).

Requirements

• A local coding agent with filesystem access and the ability to run shell commands
• Claude Code is required only for the custom marketplace-source install and /frontend-slides:frontend-slides command
• For PPT conversion: Python with python-pptx library
• For URL deployment: Node.js + Vercel account (free)
• For PDF export: Node.js (Playwright installs automatically)

Contributing & Support

If this skill saved you from a night of fighting with slides, the two best ways to give back take under a minute:

• ⭐ Star the repo — stars are how other people discover this project.
• 📣 Share a deck you made — post it and tag the repo; real decks made by real users are the best gallery.

Want to go further? New templates and layout presets are the most welcome contributions — see CONTRIBUTING.md. Adding a template is a markdown-only change; no JavaScript required.

Credits

Original skill created by @zarazhangrui — the original repository is zarazhangrui/frontend-slides.

This fork and its layout-presets pack are maintained by @dreamid27.

License

MIT — Use it, modify it, share it.