Deck Review Rubric Skill

Deck reviews default to taste: font opinions, color takes, and "I'd reorder this" — the reviewer's aesthetic imposed at slide grain while the deck's actual failure (no argument, no ask, dishonest chart) sails through unexamined. The rubric reviews what decks fail at: argument (do the headlines make a case — deck-outline-first skim test), evidence (does each slide prove its claim — evidence-grading weight), density (billboard or wall — slide-density-rules), arc (does tension carry the room — deck-narrative-arc), and honesty (axes, claims, caveats — citation-hygiene). Findings sort by severity — broken beats suboptimal beats taste — and the review ends with the only sentence presenters can act on: the two fixes that matter most.

What This Skill Produces

• The rubric scores — the five dimensions, each with the evidence for its score (cited slides, not vibes)
• The severity-sorted findings — 🔴 broken (would fail in the room) / 🟡 suboptimal (costs force) / ⚪ taste (offered, labeled)
• The two-fixes call — the highest-leverage changes, because forty comments produce paralysis and two produce a better deck
• The reviewer discipline — the review-comments-resolver contract honored from the giving side

Required Inputs

Ask for these if not provided:

• The deck and its job — audience, ask, time slot; a deck can't be reviewed against an unknown mission (the most common finding is that the mission itself is undefined — that's a 🔴, not a formatting note)
• The review's timing — outline stage (structure feedback is cheap — the ideal), draft (full rubric), night-before (triage: 🔴 only, kindly)
• The presenter's stakes and experience — a first-time board presenter needs the confidence-preserving version: same findings, framed as upgrades
• What the presenter wants checked — their stated worry gets explicit attention (and the review says what it found there)

Framework: The Rubric Rules

1. Argument first — the skim test: read only the headlines: is there a case with an ask? Topic-titled slides, missing asks, and sequences that don't argue are 🔴 findings that outrank everything visual — a beautiful deck with no argument is a screensaver.
2. Evidence per claim: each headline's slide either proves it or doesn't — overclaimed charts, anecdotes carrying prevalence claims, and the missing caveat are the substance findings. The honesty sweep rides here: axes, windows, sources, the "studies show" ban.
3. Severity discipline is the review's value: 🔴 = fails in the room (broken argument, dishonest chart, no ask) · 🟡 = costs force (walls of text, buried wow, sagging middle) · ⚪ = taste (labeled as such, take-or-leave). A review that presents font kerning and a missing ask at equal volume has abdicated its job.
4. Two fixes, named: the closing call — "fix these two and this deck works: (1) the ask is missing, add slide 9; (2) slides 4–6 are one claim, merge them" — because the presenter has one evening, and the rubric's forty observations compress into the two that move the outcome.
5. Review the deck, not your deck: the reviewer's restructuring instinct ("I'd tell this differently") is ⚪ unless the current structure fails the rubric — the deck stays the presenter's (house-style-enforcer voice-preservation logic). Timing shapes kindness: night-before reviews deliver 🔴s only, with the fix attached, and save the 🟡 education for the retro.

Output Format

Deck Review: [deck] — for [audience/ask] · stage: [outline/draft/final]

Rubric Scores

Findings (severity-sorted)

🔴 Broken: [each: slide, what fails in the room, the fix] 🟡 Costs force: […] ⚪ Taste (labeled): […]

The Two Fixes

[1 · 2 — the highest-leverage pair, with why]

On Your Stated Worry

[What the review found about the thing they asked about]

Quality Checks

• All five dimensions scored with slide citations
• Every finding carries its severity honestly — no taste smuggled into 🟡
• The two-fixes call exists and is genuinely highest-leverage
• The presenter's stated worry got an explicit answer
• Night-before reviews delivered 🔴 only

Anti-Patterns

• Do not review taste at finding volume — label it ⚪ or leave it home
• Do not equalize severities — the missing ask and the font choice are different emergencies
• Do not rewrite the deck in your voice — rubric failures get fixes; style differences get silence
• Do not deliver forty comments — the two-fixes compression is the review's actual deliverable
• Do not soften 🔴s for kindness — the room will deliver them unsoftened tomorrow