A pathway or an algorithm had no slide of its own and came out as bullets.
"flow" is a slide of two to eight steps, each a short phrase with an
optional note; the exporter lays it out — across for up to four, down for
more — as rounded boxes joined by arrows in the shape vocabulary the
renderer already draws, so the model is never asked for coordinates and
Python gains one small builder. Word gets the steps as a numbered list.
The theme sample shows one, so every template demonstrates it.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Dv6sqaY6Vq3ChZHMem3cnU
The nine layouts are a fixed vocabulary and a good default, but "lay the three
severity levels out left to right with arrows between them" had no expression in
them at all. A "custom" slide now carries a list of shapes: positioned text,
eight autoshape families, lines, images, tables, and native PowerPoint charts —
column, bar, line, pie, doughnut.
Coordinates are percentages of the slide rather than EMU, because a model
reasons about "the left half" and not about 12192000. Shapes draw in array
order, so a later one sits on top.
The model never emits Python. It names shapes and the renderer draws them:
running model-authored code to lay out a slide would be an enormous amount of
trust to buy a feature, on a server holding clinical data and secrets.
Validation lives beside the text that teaches the vocabulary, in one file, so
what the model is told about is exactly what is accepted. Kinds are an
allowlist, colours must be six hex digits, coordinates are clamped inside the
slide — a shape at x=95 w=30 is cut to the edge rather than drawn half off it —
counts are capped, a pie is held to one series, and anything that cannot be
understood is dropped. A custom slide that loses every shape becomes a plain one
rather than a heading over an empty frame, and one bad shape is caught in the
renderer so it cannot cost the slide it sits on.
A figure on a custom slide is requested through an image shape, drawn by the
same path as any other, and attached by job id. Word renders a custom slide as
its words in reading order with its tables and figures — lossy, and better than
dropping the slide.
Verified live end to end: asked to "lay the three severity levels out left to
right as coloured boxes with arrows between them", the model produced
[rect arrow rect arrow rect], chose green/amber/red itself, and the rendered
slide was looked at. A column chart beside its commentary renders with real axes
and gridlines.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Dv6sqaY6Vq3ChZHMem3cnU
Pandoc reads markdown, so every Word export had to flatten the resource to
markdown first — and a deck flattened to markdown stops being one. A comparison
became two headings and two lists, a callout became bold text, and a figure
became nothing at all, because markdown has nowhere to put it.
src/utils/docSpec.js reduces either source to the same blocks: a stored deck
where there is one, the markdown where there is not. scripts/render_docx.py
draws them. A comparison comes out as a labelled two-column table, a callout as
a shaded box, a table as a real table, a figure embedded at its own aspect ratio
with its caption, and speaker notes as muted indented text.
The deck wins over the markdown beside it, because that markdown is a
serialisation of the deck and reading it instead would be reading a lossy copy of
what is right there.
Word now carries the figures too. The export route skipped fetching them for
docx, which was correct when pandoc could not place them and wrong the moment
this could.
Pandoc stays installed and stays the fallback: a plainer document beats a failed
download. Both renderers now share one spawn helper.
Verified end to end: a deck with two figures exported as a six-page Word document
with both images embedded (537KB, two files in word/media), rendered to PDF and
looked at — the comparison is a labelled table, the figure sits at its true
aspect ratio, and the notes read as notes.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Dv6sqaY6Vq3ChZHMem3cnU
