Scientific Slides

Use this skill for CS research presentations. Optimize for technical clarity, narrative flow, and audience comprehension under time pressure.

Start With Talk Constraints

Clarify or infer:

• talk type: conference talk, paper reading, defense, seminar, lab update, demo, tutorial
• audience: subfield experts, broad CS audience, students, industry engineers, reviewers
• duration and Q&A budget
• medium: Beamer, PowerPoint, Markdown-to-slides, or another deck workflow
• whether the deck supports a paper, a project demo, a proposal, or a benchmark report

Read references/talk_types_guide.md or references/presentation_structure.md when structure needs help.

Narrative for CS Talks

Most strong computing talks follow this sequence:

1. problem and why it matters
2. why the problem is hard
3. core idea, architecture, or system design
4. how the method / system / study works
5. evaluation setup
6. key results and what they mean
7. limitations, takeaways, and next steps

Do not mirror the paper section-by-section if that hurts comprehension.

Slide-Level Rules

• Keep one main idea per slide.
• Prefer diagrams, tables, and concise bullets over paragraph text.
• Make architecture, pipeline, benchmark setup, or experimental protocol visually explicit.
• Highlight the comparison that matters; do not dump full result tables when a distilled view is enough.
• Use animations sparingly and only when they reveal structure or sequence.

For result slides, answer three questions fast:

• what is being compared
• what the main result is
• why the result matters

Visual Content That Matters in CS

Prioritize visuals that clarify technical structure:

• model or system architecture
• data / control flow
• training or inference pipeline
• benchmark composition and evaluation protocol
• ablation summaries
• failure analysis or qualitative examples
• latency / memory / throughput tradeoffs

Read references/data_visualization_slides.md and references/slide_design_principles.md when revising cluttered result slides.

Use Local Assets and Scripts

For LaTeX/Beamer work:

• assets/beamer_template_conference.tex
• assets/beamer_template_defense.tex
• assets/beamer_template_seminar.tex
• references/beamer_guide.md

For PowerPoint-style work:

• assets/powerpoint_design_guide.md
• assets/timing_guidelines.md

For production and review:

• scripts/slides_to_pdf.py
• scripts/validate_presentation.py
• scripts/pdf_to_images.py

Only use scripts/generate_slide_image.py or scripts/generate_slide_image_ai.py if the user explicitly wants synthetic illustration support. Do not default to decorative AI images.

Review Checklist

Before finalizing a deck, check:

• the first 3 slides establish the problem and context fast
• every result slide has an interpretable takeaway
• fonts and figure labels remain readable at presentation distance
• timing is realistic for the allotted slot
• backup slides exist for details that may come up in Q&A

Default Deliverables

When the user asks for slide help without specifying format, return:

• a talk outline
• slide-by-slide message plan
• recommendations for figures and tables
• timing notes
• revision priorities for clarity