# Writing a presentation

`SKILL.md` points here. Moved from it on 2026-10-10, unchanged.

## The rules

These rules hold for any GT presentation, the brand deck included. Kevin set them as how presentations are written for people (2026-07-29 and 2026-10-05).

1. **Plan in text first.** Write the narrative as text, and each slide's text with a description of its diagram, before building slides.
2. **Each slide stands alone.** A reader understands it in isolation and from first principles. It has a reason to exist and connects to the slide before it. Kevin, 2026-10-05: "slides have to propelry tie into each other and have a reason for existing".
3. **Introduce before relying.** An idea (testing several models, a metric, a term) is introduced before a slide depends on it. Jargon labels and derivations left unexplained read as rookie mistakes.
4. **Open with the approach.** Start with how the brief was approached, then how the scope grew.
5. **Go back when the old style read better.** If an earlier presentation style read better, return to it. Keep openers Kevin liked as separate slides: the dither-on-shader openers stayed beside the photo openers (2026-09-09).
6. **The viewer.** A presentation runs in a real viewer: a sidebar of every slide, present mode on its own screen, centered slides at every window size. `references/viewer-and-build.md` (What Kevin expects of a viewer) lists the rest.