pptx Skill — Presentations from Company Templates

Overview

The pptx skill lets the Unique AI Conduct agent create and edit PowerPoint presentations that follow your company's own templates, including fonts, colors, layouts, logos, and branding. It covers reading and extracting content from .pptx files, building new decks from your templates, editing existing decks, and running quality checks (layout, text fit, contrast, dates) before delivering the file.

Users configure nothing. They ask for a presentation in a Conduct space ("Create a 6-slide pitch about X"), confirm which template to use, and receive a downloadable .pptx. What determines output quality is set up by an admin: the company's PowerPoint templates in the Knowledge Base folder templates-conduct.

Who is it for?

• Admins. This page is mainly for you. One setup step, a folder of templates in the Knowledge Base, is what makes the agent's decks come out on-brand.

• End users. Nothing to set up. Ask for a deck, confirm the template when prompted, and download the result.

If you're unable to access certain features or sections of this article, it's possible that your firm doesn't have access or hasn't upgraded to the latest version. Please reach out to your internal support team for further assistance.

Model requirements

Presentation generation is one of the most demanding skills the agent runs. It duplicates real template slides, fills them with generated content, and then visually inspects each rendered slide for overlapping text, cut-off titles, out-of-bounds elements, and poor contrast before delivering the file. Because of that visual QA step, the pptx skill needs an LLM with both strong reasoning and vision (image) capabilities. A model without vision cannot see or correct layout issues on the rendered slides, and output quality drops noticeably.

The skill runs inside Conduct, the Unique agent stage and harness. The model behind Conduct has a large effect on output quality. The table below tracks which models have been validated for the pptx skill; new models are added as they are tested.

Tested settings

Agent loop limit: set at least 400. Producing and visually QA-ing a full deck currently takes the agent roughly 150-200 loops (agent iterations) end to end. The Conduct agent's maximum loop setting defaults to 400 and can be raised up to 1000. Leave it at 400 or above so the agent has room to finish a deck, including the visual QA and layout-fix passes, without being cut off part way. A limit close to the actual loop count risks the agent stopping before the deck is complete.

Setup guide (admins)

The skill builds decks by duplicating slides from a real company template. It can also build a deck from scratch when no template is available, but the result won't be on-brand. To get on-brand decks it needs your templates in the Knowledge Base. This is a one-time setup.

Step 1: Create the templates folder. In the Knowledge Base, create a folder named exactly templates-conduct at the top level. The name and location are fixed: this is the folder the agent reads.

Step 2: Upload your .pptx templates. Put them directly in templates-conduct, or in subfolders one level down (for example templates-conduct/Investor Relations/) when different teams should see different templates. Add the master corporate deck plus any variants: pitch deck, QBR, one-pager, department templates. Real presentation files work best, because the agent duplicates their slides directly, so covers, closing slides, and a range of content layouts should all be present.

Step 3: Check access. Users only see templates in folders their own Knowledge Base permissions allow, and folder listings are filtered per user. A subfolder a user cannot read is invisible to them.

That is the whole setup. There is no registration step and nothing to ingest: the agent finds templates by listing the folder, not by searching document content. Full details, including team separation and the no-template case, are on Company Templates for Document Skills.

Template quality guidelines:

The agent stays very close to the template. It duplicates real slides and replicates whatever it finds there, so a clean, complete template produces clean, on-brand decks, while a messy one gets its clutter reproduced on every slide. Time spent on the template shows up in the output.

• Keep the template clean. Clean footers, consistent layouts, correct page numbering, and no leftover clutter such as stray text boxes, off-slide elements, orphaned placeholders, or off-brand artifacts. The agent copies what it sees, so anything untidy in the template shows up in the generated deck.

• Put everything you want replicated in the template. If a slide type, layout, footer, or branding element is not in the file, the agent has nothing to copy. It will not invent the missing pieces.

• Include a cover slide and a closing slide. The skill treats them as branding bookends and keeps them on every deck.

• Include a variety of content layouts (title + bullets, two-column, image + text) so the agent can pick a suitable slide to duplicate for each part of the story.

• Keep placeholder text realistic in length. The agent matches its content volume to what the template slide originally held.

How it works for users

1. Ask for a deck in a Conduct space: "Create a presentation about our Q3 results, ~8 slides."

2. Confirm the template. The agent lists the .pptx templates it can see in templates-conduct and its subfolders, then opens a single confirmation dialog with all of them and a best guess pre-selected. Each entry is the file's path relative to the templates folder: Corporate Master.pptx, or Investor Relations/Pitch Deck.pptx for one in a subfolder.

3. Two further options are always in the dialog: uploading a template to the chat instead, and building without a template.

4. Template selection happens on every request. The dialog is shown each time a deck is asked for. There is no saved default that skips it, and nothing is carried over from an earlier session.

5. The agent builds and checks the deck, duplicating template slides, filling in content, then running automated QA: text fitting inside placeholders, no overlapping titles, nothing out of bounds, readable contrast (no light text drifting onto imagery), consistent dates, intact branding bookends.

6. Download link at the end of the turn. The finished .pptx is delivered as a clickable download card. The in-platform preview can render fonts and spacing slightly off, so users should download and open the file in PowerPoint to see the true layout.

The dialog lists everything the agent can see, so it has no search field: running the listing again returns the same set. When none of the listed templates fits, a user can attach their own .pptx to the chat, or name a specific Knowledge Base folder in the conversation, and the agent will list that folder instead.

Uploading a .pptx to the chat

When a user uploads a .pptx, the agent asks what role it plays:

• Working file. The agent edits the uploaded deck itself (for example "fix the dates in this deck").

• Content only. The agent extracts the text and rebuilds it on the company template; the upload's design is not copied. This is the choice for "turn this old deck into our current branding".

A chat upload is used for that conversation only. It is never written into templates-conduct.

Tips for admins

• A clean template affects output quality more than anything else. The agent replicates the template closely, so clean footers, consistent layouts, and no leftover clutter matter. Everything you want in the output should already exist, clean, in the template.

• Keep the set small and current. Every template a user can read shows up in their confirmation dialog, so curate the folder.

• Name templates descriptively (Corporate Pitch 2026.pptx, QBR Template.pptx). The names are what users see when confirming, and what the agent's best-guess matching uses.

• Update in place. Upload the new version over the existing file in the same folder; the next request uses it. There is nothing to re-register.

• Use subfolders for team-specific templates. One level below templates-conduct is read, and access is per folder, so each team sees only its own set.

• Brand colors come from the template. The agent inherits theme colors, fonts, and master backgrounds from the chosen template file and does not apply a palette of its own. If decks come out off-brand, the fix is almost always in the template file itself.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Where does the skill itself come from? Do I need to install it?
A: No. It ships with the platform and is available in Conduct spaces automatically. Admins only provide the templates folder. One caveat: if a personal copy of the skill already exists in the Knowledge Base, it does not update automatically when a new version ships. Remove that copy so the current version re-syncs.

Q: Does the folder have to be called templates-conduct?
A: Yes. The name and the top-level location are fixed. A user can point the agent at a different folder inside a conversation, but that applies to that conversation only.

Q: Do the template files need to be ingested?
A: No. Templates are found by listing the folder, so whether a file has been ingested makes no difference to whether it appears in the dialog.

Q: The templates don't show up for users.
A: Check that the folder is named templates-conduct and sits at the top level of the Knowledge Base, that the templates are in it or one subfolder down, and that the users have read permission on the folder holding them. If the space limits its Knowledge Base access to selected folders, templates-conduct has to be among them.

Q: Can I set a default template so I'm not asked every time?
A: No. The confirmation dialog is shown on every request. The most likely template is pre-selected, so confirming it is a single step.

Q: Users report the preview looks broken but the file is fine.
A: This is expected. The in-platform preview substitutes fonts and can shift spacing. The generated file is correct; download and open it in PowerPoint to verify the true layout.

Q: The agent proposed the wrong template.
A: The dialog lists every template the user can see, so picking a different entry is enough. If the right one isn't in the list, it is either outside templates-conduct and its immediate subfolders, or the user has no read access to the folder holding it. Both are admin-side fixes. In the meantime the user can attach the template to the chat, or name its folder in the conversation.

Q: My decks come out looking off-brand or messy.
A: The template is usually the cause, since the agent replicates it closely and does not correct it. Check the template for clean footers, consistent layouts, correct page numbers, and no stray or off-brand elements, and make sure every layout and branding element you expect in the output is present in the file. Clean the template and re-run.

Q: What happens if no template is available at all?
A: The agent builds the deck from scratch and says in its reply that it found no template. The deck is delivered either way, but it will not be on-brand.

Q: Can users bring their own template?
A: Yes. Uploading a .pptx to the chat and choosing "working file" uses it for that conversation. Chat uploads are never saved as anyone's default; company-wide templates belong in templates-conduct.