Pitch Package - the whole performance

A pitch is one argument delivered through three instruments: the deck (setup), the demo (proof), and the speaker (trust). The demo is the proof; the deck is the setup. This skill's job is sequencing and budget, so the instruments never fight each other. Two rules govern everything: interview before you build, and budget the slot first.

Phase 1 - Interview before you build

STOP: produce no artifacts in this phase. Ask (adapting to what's already known):

1. Audience: hackathon judges, VCs, or a customer? What do they explicitly judge or care about (rubric, thesis, their own pain)?
2. Slot: total minutes? Is Q&A inside or after it?
3. Inventory: what already exists - working product? demo video? deck? scripts? Reuse beats rebuild.
4. Demo mode: live product on stage (higher wow, higher risk) or recorded film (deterministic)? Default to recorded unless the live path has been rehearsed with a fallback.
5. Speakers: who talks, and are there real credentials to weave into the intro?
6. Constraints: venue machine? offline? projector resolution? phone-as-teleprompter?
7. Voice and music: a model voice (Kokoro af_heart at 1.0 is the default) or a human? A music bed, and whose rights? For a model voice, agree to audition one segment two ways after the brief is confirmed, then let them choose; never pick for them.
8. Branding and rights: the company logo under the picture? A copyright and distribution line, in which words? A disclaimer card for a public copy? Whose logo, if a prospect's brand is in the product? Ask; a brand in every frame cannot be cut out later.
9. Where it plays: a portal, a stage, YouTube, a feed? A film with a caption band needs its own 16:9 cut; captions burned in, as a sidecar file, or both.
10. Film guardrails: if a demo film will be made or reused, what is it for and what must be burned in - any third-party logo or name in the frame, generic or personalised disclaimer card, a persistent "Demo purposes only" label, the rights line and company mark, and where it may live (private streaming link, our website's unlisted showcase, direct file, public platform)? Optional guardrails, mandatory questions: demo-video/references/distribution.md.

Reflect the answers back as a one-paragraph brief and get a nod before Phase 2. Skipping this interview is how pitches end up with a beautiful deck for the wrong audience.

Phase 2 - Budget the slot first

Before writing or building anything, write the budget line:

5:00 slot = ~2:30 spoken deck + 2:36 demo video + ~0:10 transitions
(runs ~5:15 as written -> trim points named in the script)

The budget decides scope: how many slides get narrated, whether the demo needs a shorter cut, what gets trimmed live. Every downstream artifact inherits this budget. If the pieces don't sum inside the slot on paper, they won't on stage.

Phase 3 - Compose (gap-fill via the other skills)

Pick the audience lens from references/audiences.md - same assets, different lead, emphasis, and close. Then fill only the gaps the inventory revealed:

• Missing demo film -> demo-video skill (storyboard keyed to the proof this audience needs, approved before capture). That skill also owns the motion and annotation layer, so the film can point at what it proves rather than relying on narration alone; budget the extra seconds it costs when you size the demo slot.
• Missing or stale deck -> pitch-deck skill (demo-slot slide included; appendix slides for this audience's hard questions).
• The live speech -> pitch-craft skill, LIVE register: hook first, team intro after the hook, the demo-break marker stating what the video covers, delivery cues, named trim points.

One throughline threads all three artifacts - if the deck's tagline, the video's close, and the speech's refrain differ, unify them before rehearsal.

The joins are part of the throughline work. Wherever the film or the talk changes person, case or topic, a transition line says so before the screen does, and nowhere else (pitch-craft's references/storytelling.md). The close lands the throughline, then the ask for customers or investors, or the name for judges, as the last thing heard; for a film that is a recap card walked by the voice, with the pilot line last (demo-video's references/structure.md).

Phase 4 - Rehearse and ship

• Stitch plan per references/stitching.md (which variant: fully recorded film, live-with-recorded-demo, fully live) plus the fallback ladder.
• Rehearse against the clock: read the script aloud with a stopwatch once; apply the named trims if over. Adjust the script, never the speaking pace.
• Q&A prep: appendix slides + a one-page honest-defense brief (the questions you fear, answered with what's true - overclaims die here, before a judge finds them).
• Day-of checklist: local copies of deck AND video on the presenting machine (no network dependency), test in an incognito window at venue resolution, backup speaker for each section, the teleprompter (phone-friendly script page) charged and loaded.
• Deliverables: the film, its 16:9 cut if it carries a band, the .srt, the timed script, the thumbnail, and one line naming the voice, the speed, the music track and its licence (demo-video's references/soundtrack.md).

References

• references/audiences.md - the three lenses (judges / VC / customer): what each judges, what leads, what closes.
• references/stitching.md - assembly variants, ffmpeg stitch recipe, fallback ladder, phone-teleprompter pattern.