Build slides and posters

The paper is already here. The job is to decide what fits in the time or on the board, and to build it as a file in this project.

How this works in Oleafly

There is no slides engine and no poster project type. A Beamer deck is a LaTeX file whose class is beamer. A poster is a LaTeX file whose class is beamerposter or tikzposter. A Typst deck is a .typ file that imports a slide package. All of them are ordinary files in the project you already have open.

set_main_doc changes which file the project compiles, and it picks the engine from the extension: .tex compiles as LaTeX, .typ as Typst, .md as Markdown. It also changes what the preview pane shows. So the flow is always: write the file, point the project at it, compile, look at it, point the project back at the paper.

Restore the main document even when the compile failed. A project left pointing at a half-finished deck looks broken the next time the user opens it.

1. Pick the path

Match the path to the project. A Typst project should get a Typst deck, not a LaTeX one, unless the user asks otherwise. A LaTeX project should get Beamer.

Then ask, if you do not already know:

• How long is the talk, or how big is the board?
• Who is the audience: specialists, a mixed conference room, a committee?
• Is there a template the venue or the institution requires?

2. Derive the outline from the paper

Call project_map for the section list, labels, and figure references. Read the abstract, the introduction's last paragraph (which usually states the contribution), the results section, and the conclusion with read_file.

Then write the outline before you write any LaTeX. One line per slide, and each line is the message of that slide, not its title.

Slide 7: the effect holds when we remove the largest site, so it is not driven by one hospital.

A slide whose message you cannot write in one sentence is two slides or no slide.

Put the outline in update_todos so the build is visible and the count stays honest.

Slide counts by talk length, and the section split, are in assets/timing.md. The short version: roughly one slide per minute, with data slides counting double and section dividers counting for nothing. A 15 minute conference talk is 15 to 18 slides. A 45 minute seminar is 35 to 45.

For a poster, the content budget is much smaller than authors expect. references/poster.md has the section word counts.

3. Build the file

Read the depth you need first:

• references/beamer-deck.md for the Beamer structure, frame patterns, and what to avoid
• references/poster.md for sizes, font scale, column layout, and the two poster classes
• references/typst-and-pptx.md for Typst decks and every PowerPoint route

When the scientific-slides skill is enabled, load_skill it and read_skill_file its assets for a fuller starting point:

• assets/beamer_template_conference.tex for a 15 minute conference talk
• assets/beamer_template_seminar.tex for a 45 to 60 minute seminar
• assets/beamer_template_defense.tex for a thesis defense
• references/beamer_guide.md, references/slide_design_principles.md, references/talk_types_guide.md

Those templates are full documents. Copy the preamble and the frame patterns you need with write_file, then replace the placeholder content with the real outline. Do not paste 400 lines of template and leave the sample content in it.

When scientific-slides is not enabled, or read_skill_file is not available in this run, start from assets/slides-beamer.tex and assets/poster-beamerposter.tex in this skill. Both compile on the bundled LaTeX engine as they are.

For a poster, the venue-templates skill carries assets/posters/beamerposter_academic.tex and references/posters_guidelines.md, which is the more complete source on sizes and typography. Reach it the same way.

Reuse the paper's figures. They are already in the project, usually under figures/. list_files to find them and point \graphicspath at the directory rather than copying files around. A figure built for a two-column paper often needs its fonts enlarged for a slide, so check it after the first compile.

Reuse the paper's bibliography the same way, but cite sparingly. A talk needs three or four citations, not forty.

4. Compile and look at it

1. set_main_doc to the deck or poster file
2. compile
3. get_log if it failed
4. verify_pdf_pages to see the rendered pages, when PDF page capture is on in Settings. It rasterizes up to six pages, so pick the ones with dense content. When the setting is off, use get_pdf_text and read the page count and the text flow
5. Fix what the pages show: text past the frame edge, a figure that swamps the slide, a table that has run off, a title that wraps to three lines
6. set_main_doc back to the paper

Overflow is the failure that matters and the one that never appears in the log. Overfull \vbox on a Beamer frame means content past the bottom of the slide, which the audience will not see. Split the frame.

5. Hand it over

Report in chat: the file path, the slide or panel count, the estimated timing against the requested length, and anything you had to leave out. Call show_location on the deck file so it opens.

Then run the checklist in references/quality-checklist.md and say which items you could not check.

Decision points

When something goes wrong

• beamerposter or tikzposter is not in the bundle: get_log will say the class is missing. Switch to the other one and say why.
• A Typst deck fails on the package import: touying and polylux are fetched from the Typst package registry, which needs a network connection on the first compile. Offline, use a plain Typst page-per-slide layout instead.
• The compile succeeds but the PDF has one page: for Beamer, a missing \end{frame} swallows the rest of the document. For a poster, one page is correct.
• verify_pdf_pages returns nothing: the PDF capture setting is off. Say so once and continue with get_pdf_text.
• You changed the main document and the run ended early: tell the user which file to set back, by name.
• Frames overflow after adding a figure: shrink with \includegraphics[width=0.8\textwidth] before shrinking the font. Small text on a slide is worse than a smaller figure.

Artifacts

• slides/main.tex or slides/main.typ, the deck
• poster/main.tex, the poster
• The compiled PDF for whichever was built last

Done when

• Every slide has one message, and the message is in the outline.
• The slide count matches the time available.
• Every figure has been looked at in the rendered PDF, not just in the source.
• No frame overflows.
• Font sizes on a poster meet the minimums in references/poster.md.
• The project's main document is back to the paper.

From a terminal

Outside the app (a terminal, or a coding agent with a shell), the oleafly command does the same work. Always pass --json and check ok.