It’s not the tool

You asked an AI to make slides. The result looks generic, cluttered, or just off. Before you blame the skill or the agent, check three things: your input, your iteration, and your model.

Most bad slides come from vague prompts. The fix is straightforward.

1. Structure your content first

The number one reason AI slides look bad: the AI had to guess what you wanted.

If you dump a wall of text and say “make slides,” the AI has to decide what goes on each slide, how to break up the content, what components to use, and what to emphasize. It will guess wrong.

Instead, give it structure. A simple text or markdown file works:

## Slide 1: Q1 Results
- Revenue: $4.2M (up 34%)
- New customers: 847
- Show these as stats cards

## Slide 2: Growth by Region
- APAC: 52% growth
- EMEA: 28% growth
- Americas: 41% growth
- Use a bar chart

## Slide 3: Product Roadmap
- Q2: API v3 launch
- Q3: Mobile app beta
- Q4: Enterprise tier
- Timeline component

You’re telling the AI exactly what content goes where. You’re specifying what components to use — stats cards, bar chart, timeline. The AI doesn’t have to guess. It just builds what you described.

This alone fixes most ugly slides. The more specific your input, the better the output.

2. Iterate — it’s just a prompt away

Your first generation doesn’t have to be the final version. The same AI that built the deck can change any part of it.

Slide 5 looks cramped? Say so:

Slide 5 has too much text. Split it into two slides.

The chart colors clash? Fix it:

Change the chart on slide 3 to use blue and gray instead of red and green.

The layout feels wrong? Ask for something different:

Replace the bullet list on slide 7 with flip cards —
front shows the feature name, back shows the benefit.

Each edit is one sentence. You don’t need to open an editor, find the right element, or figure out CSS. Just describe what’s wrong and what you want instead.

People treat AI generation as a one-shot process. It’s not. It’s a conversation. Generate, review, adjust, repeat. Three rounds of edits will get you a better deck than one “perfect” prompt.

For a deeper look at editing, see how to edit AI-generated HTML slides.

3. Use a better model

This makes a bigger difference than most people expect.

Take Claude as an example. The same prompt on Sonnet versus Opus produces noticeably different slides. Opus chooses better layouts, writes tighter copy, picks more harmonious color combinations, and handles complex components (charts, architecture diagrams, multi-column layouts) with more precision.

The pattern holds across other model families too. Bigger models are better at design decisions because they have a richer understanding of what “looks good” — spacing, contrast, hierarchy, visual balance.

If your slides consistently look off despite structured prompts, try the best model available to you. The token cost difference is small for a 10-slide deck, and the quality gap is real.

It’s just code written for you

AI is a tool that writes code on your behalf. Your slides are an HTML file — the same kind of file behind every website you visit. The AI generates it, and the AI can modify it.

If you wouldn’t accept the first draft of an essay, don’t accept the first draft of a slide deck. Tell the AI what to fix. Be specific. It responds well to specific.

Structure your content. Iterate on the output. Use the best model you can. That’s it.

Get started

  1. Install the html-slides skill — free and open source
  2. Write a structured outline of your content
  3. Generate, review, and refine

Need the presenter experience? The HTMLSlides app adds dual-display mode, speaker notes, and a timer.