Part I · Sovereign agent · 02

First real deck

Pasteable brief → v1 → three surgical edits → offline PPTX or HTML.

30 min

Why a tight brief beats “make slides”

Quality loop (never skip “open file”)

Brief

Spine on disk

Generate

Agent writes files

Open file

Offline check

Edit

3 concrete fixes

Export

Handoff zip

Vague prompts produce generic SaaS sludge: too many slides, no argument, stock metaphors. The agent needs a spine: audience, claim, outline, constraints. You provide the spine; it executes layout and copy drafts.

Copy-paste brief (edit the brackets)

Save as design-lab/brief.md (or append under “Deck”). Then paste the same text into Hermes.

DECK BRIEF: Open Design course
Project path: [absolute path]/design-lab/
Export: PPTX preferred (or self-contained HTML if PPTX fails)
Audience: [who will see this]
Goal: after the deck they will [one verb + object]
Core claim (one sentence): [...]
Hard facts that must appear exactly:
- [...]
- [...]
Slide outline (max 8):
1 Title
2 Problem
3 Why now
4 Approach
5 Proof / example
6 Plan / next steps
7 Risks
8 Ask / CTA
Tone: direct, no hype adjectives, no “leverage/synergy”
Visual: dark background OK; high contrast; one idea per slide; no walls of text
Write files only under design-lab/decks/. After export, list the full path to the file.

Run loop

Steps · tap to check0/5

Proof is offline open + changelog. A chat preview is not a deck.

Common failures

15 slides of fluff, enforce max 8 in the brief and cut again.
Agent invents statistics, forbid any number not in “Hard facts.”
Export only as conversation markdown, insist on PPTX/HTML path on disk.

Proof of completion

design-lab/decks/ holds a multi-slide file (PPTX and/or HTML) you opened outside Hermes, plus decks/changelog.md listing three edits you requested and confirmed.

Proof · this device0/1

Stored on this device only, not sent anywhere.

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