Coding agents

Coding agents can write Astlide decks like any other files. Three things help them do it well:

• the MCP server, whose tools read PowerPoint templates, import .pptx files, find text that doesn’t fit and export decks;
• the agent skill, which teaches the slide syntax, layouts and the write → check → fix → export loop;
• the docs as plain text, at /llms.txt and /llms-full.txt.

MCP server

The server comes with @astlide/core: astlide mcp runs it over stdio, with Bun. Nothing else to install — any project with Astlide has it.

Each call names the Astlide project to work on, and uses that project’s own @astlide/core.

Tools

Tool	Arguments	Returns
template_layouts	templatePath (.pptx / .potx / .thmx)	The template’s layouts: the id to use as slideLayout, PowerPoint name and type, title / body / slide-number placeholders, and which built-in layouts (cover, section, default, two-column, code) are drawn with each; theme colors and fonts
import_pptx	path, optional projectRoot, deck, force, includeHtml	Each slide’s title, speaker notes and text as Markdown. With projectRoot, also writes an editable deck, like astlide import
check_deck	projectRoot, deck, optional build	Text and boxes that don’t fit, per slide (below)
render_deck	projectRoot, deck, formats (pptx, pdf), optional outDir, build	The exported files’ paths, as astlide export writes them

check_deck and render_deck build the site themselves (check_deck only when dist/ is older than the deck), so no dev server is needed. PDF export needs Playwright’s Chromium (bunx playwright install chromium).

Claude Code

claude mcp add astlide -- bunx astlide mcp

Add --scope project to share it with your team through .mcp.json.

Codex

~/.codex/config.toml

[mcp_servers.astlide]
command = "bunx"
args = ["astlide", "mcp"]

Gemini CLI

// ~/.gemini/settings.json (or .gemini/settings.json in the project)
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "astlide": {
      "command": "bunx",
      "args": ["astlide", "mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Other MCP clients take the same command: bunx astlide mcp, started in the project folder.

Checking a deck

check_deck lays the deck out with the engine behind the PowerPoint export — at 1920×1080, with the theme’s fonts, without a browser — and reports, per slide:

Kind	Meaning
text-clipped	Text cut off by the slide or a box with overflow: hidden — part of it can’t be seen
text-overflow	Text spilling out of its box (a fixed-height card, a column, the slide’s content area)
box-clipped / box-overflow	The same for pictures, tables and embeds
off-slide	Outside the slide, where nothing clips it

Each issue has the slide number and title, the text, the element and what it overflows, and how far in px on which side:

2 problem(s) in 2 of 12 slides:
- Slide 4 "Results": 5 text blocks, "Churn fell to 2%" to "Next: EMEA", are cut off by the slide (186px bottom)
- Slide 9 "Pricing": text "Enterprise plans include single sign-on, audit logs and…" (p) is cut off by div.card (48px bottom)

so the agent can shorten the text, split the slide or pick another layout, and check again.

Text is measured with the fonts the deck loads (its @font-face rules and Google Fonts); when one can’t be found, the result says so and widths are approximate. Not checked: Mermaid diagrams (laid out by the browser) and pages of .pptx files shown as they are.

Agent skill

skills/astlide/SKILL.md is an Agent Skill: deck structure, frontmatter, layouts, components, PowerPoint templates, export, the check loop and the usual mistakes (such as slideLayout, not layout).

• Claude Code: copy the folder to .claude/skills/astlide/ in your project (or ~/.claude/skills/astlide/ for every project).

  mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r /path/to/astlide/skills/astlide .claude/skills/

• Other agents that read Agent Skills load the same folder from their skills directory; for the rest, point the agent at the file from its instructions (AGENTS.md, GEMINI.md).

llms.txt

The docs are published for language models as well:

• https://astlide.dev/llms.txt — every page with a one-line summary (llms.txt format);
• https://astlide.dev/llms-full.txt — all pages as Markdown in one file.

Give an agent the second one when it should know all of Astlide at once.