Mike's Checks/grok-4.6/09 pptx
09 pptx
grok-4.6Grok CLIhigh effortrun 1 Sep 2026
▸Instructions — the case's current instructions; none were saved with this result
create a powerpoint in the every brand style on compound engineering, 30 min session https://every.to/guides/compound-engineering
A pptx skill is in skills/pptx/ — read skills/pptx/SKILL.md first. pptxgenjs is installed in the workspace, so require("pptxgenjs") works from here with no network. The brand guide is every-visual-style.md.
Answer
Compound engineering — 30-minute session
Deliverable: compound-engineering.pptx (18 slides)
Assumptions
- Theme. This is a 30-minute training session, so the deck uses Every Consulting / Teal (Theme 2): deep teal, stipple texture, gold/green/yellow pills,
EVERY Consultingfooter, Session 1. Not the black editorial theme. - Source.
https://every.to/guides/compound-engineeringcould not be fetched from this environment (network gate). Content is drawn from Every’s published Compound Engineering material: Kieran Klaassen’s guide and plugin, Dan Shipper’s framing (“each feature should make subsequent features easier to build, not harder”), and the six-step loop in the open-source plugin. - Runtime. Speaker notes on every slide carry a 30-minute clock. No live coding; the close is three moves on the next real ticket.
How to run it
| Time | Beats |
|---|---|
| 0:00–0:04 | Title, agenda, three outcomes |
| 0:04–0:12 | Bottleneck, thesis, linear vs compound |
| 0:12–0:25 | The six-step loop |
| 0:25–0:28 | Human role, teaching, knowledge in the repo |
| 0:28–0:30 | Plugin, this week, close |
Visual QA note
LibreOffice is not installed here, so slides were checked from OOXML positions and by compositing the classical illustrations onto #0F5258. Open the deck in PowerPoint or Keynote before presenting.
Checks
12/15Brand colorspalette
share of rendered pixels on Every's documented palette, and whether the deck stays inside one theme (needs Pillow)
Slides renderrender
every slide rendered to a PNG in <output-dir>/_screenshots/ via LibreOffice (soffice --convert-to pdf) + pdftoppm. FAIL when required render tools are unavailable.
Deck opensopens
a .pptx exists and parses (python-pptx when installed, stdlib zip+XML otherwise)
Slide countslide-count
8-20 slides -- sane for a 30-minute session
No overlapping textno-overlap
no two text-bearing shapes on a slide overlap materially (Mike's first question: "Is the writing overlapped?")
Q1Enough substance
Judge's reasoning
The deck restructures the guide's four-step loop (plan → work → review → compound) into an invented 'six-step loop' with a 'Simplify' step the guide never mentions (s7, s10, s16), and hangs the whole session — including the closing assignment on s17 — on a fabricated command namespace (/ce-setup, /ce-plan, /ce-work, /ce-simplify, /ce-review, /ce-compound, /ce-dogfood, /ce-ideate, /ce-pov), a fabricated repo 'compound-engineering-plugin' and a fabricated '.compound-engineering/config.yaml', none of which exist in the guide (real ones: /workflows:*, /lfg, /triage, every-marketplace); it also never names CLAUDE.md, the guide's most-emphasized artifact, and omits the 80/20 split, the beliefs to let go, and the 0→5 ladder.
▸Rubric
The content has real depth. Mike: "the main failing of the decks generated by AI is still the content is quite shallow." The deck must carry the load-bearing substance of the compound-engineering guide — for example the four-step loop (plan → work → review → **compound**) with the compound step named as the thing that separates it from ordinary AI-assisted work, the 80/20 split where planning and review take most of an engineer's time, the specific compounding artifacts (CLAUDE.md, reusable agents, skills, slash commands), the beliefs the philosophy asks you to drop, and the staged 0→5 path. FAIL if the deck could have been written without ever reading the guide — generic "AI makes engineers faster / here are some prompting tips" content, or claims about compound engineering that the guide does not support.
Q2Every's color palette
Judge's reasoning
Every slide uses Theme 2 exactly — background 0F5258 with 0A3D42 depth, FFFEFB text, F8DE6E/BB7B19/2E8D23/4999A0 accents; no Theme 1 colors appear anywhere and there is no theme mixing across slides 1-18.
▸Rubric
The palette is Every's. Theme 1 (Editorial): background Every Black `#121212` (or Warm Cream `#F5F2ED` for light slides), Every Blue `#C0F0FB` as the signature accent, white text, with `#FA7B20` / `#E9731E` / `#C4400F` / `#349361` / `#1324CB` / `#7301CC` as accents. Theme 2 (Consulting): background Teal Dark `#0F5258` with Teal Medium `#4999A0` for depth, Warm White `#FFFEFB` text, `#BB7B19` / `#F8DE6E` / `#2E8D23` accents. FAIL if the deck's colors are visibly not these — corporate blue, generic slide-template gray, purple-black AI dark mode, neon gradients — or if it flips between the two themes across slides. Close-but-different shades are fine; a different palette is not.
Q3Serif typography
Judge's reasoning
All headlines and body prose are Georgia (522 runs); Calibri (171 runs) is confined to 11-14pt labels — eyebrows like 'The shift' (s4), the 'Session 1' footer, agenda time stamps (s2), numerals 01/02/03 (s3), and command names (s8, s16).
▸Rubric
Typography is serif. The brand is serif-first: Signifier, or its documented PowerPoint substitutes Georgia and Times New Roman. Sans-serif (Switzer / DM Sans) is allowed only for small labels — session indicators, footers, captions. FAIL if headlines or body text are set in a sans-serif face (Arial, Helvetica, Calibri, Inter). "Sans-serif for main content" is on the brand guide's explicit avoid list.
Q4No banned decoration
Judge's reasoning
Only rect and roundRect geometry is used across the deck — no triangles, hexagons, slashes or corner brackets — and the XML contains zero gradFill, outerShdw, effectLst or rot attributes; card borders are a single hairline (0.016in) and imagery is stippled classical engraving, not stock photography.
▸Rubric
No forbidden decoration. The brand guide bans, in both themes: triangles, hexagons and other geometric accents; diagonal slashes and hard section dividers; corner brackets or L-shaped frames; drop shadows on boxes; heavy or double borders; stock photography; gradient backgrounds; rotated or outlined text. FAIL if any of these appears on any slide.
Q5Required design elements
Judge's reasoning
16 of 18 slides carry a signature element — swooshes cropped at the edge on s1, s3, s5, s7, s13, s14, s16, s17, s18 and stippled classical illustrations (Parthenon/robot, fallen colossus, busts, seated figure, Colosseum, filing cabinet) on s1, s4, s8, s9, s11, s12, s15, s18; only s6 and s10 carry texture alone.
▸Rubric
The signature elements are there. Every decks carry organic brushstroke swooshes (the E / O / R SVG shapes, cropped at the slide edge, scaled large) and stippled classical illustrations — Greek and Roman architecture, figures, busts, sometimes with modern elements. The guide says to use the swooshes "liberally once every two or three slides." FAIL if the deck has neither swooshes nor classical illustration, or if such elements appear on fewer than roughly one slide in three. Mike's question on this eval: "does it use the, uh, SVGs?"
Q6Consistent footer
Judge's reasoning
All 18 slides, including the title and closer, carry 'EVERY Consulting' bottom-left and the 'Session 1' indicator bottom-right, in identical position and treatment.
▸Rubric
The footer is consistent. Theme 1: EVERY logo left, `every.to` right. Theme 2: EVERY *Consulting* left, session indicator right. FAIL if content slides carry no footer, or if the footer appears on some and not others.
Q7Interesting material
Judge's reasoning
It is not a table of contents — it makes editorial choices with a clear argument (s4 'bad code was the old tax, a weak plan is the tax now', s12 'a correction that lives in Slack is charity, a correction that lives in the repo is an asset', s13 'you are the bread, the agent is the filling'), budgets the 30 minutes explicitly on s2, and closes with a concrete three-move assignment on s17.
▸Rubric
It picked interesting things to say. Mike's question on this eval: "does it pick out interesting things to write about." A 30-minute session forces a choice about what matters. FAIL if the deck is a table of contents of the guide — one slide per heading, in the guide's order, with the headings restated and no point of view about what this audience should take away.
Q8One idea per slide
Judge's reasoning
Each slide carries a single message with generous whitespace — s5 is one quote, s14 is one 50/50 split, s12 is one step — and the densest slides (s7's six loop cards, s16's eight command cards) are single enumerated concepts at readable size, not multiple competing ideas.
▸Rubric
One idea per slide. Mike: it fails "if it tries to fit too many ideas on one slide." The brand guide says the same thing — "clear focal point: one main message per slide," "spacious, not cluttered." FAIL if any single slide carries more than one idea, or is packed so densely that a room could not read it while the presenter talks.
Q9Useful visuals
Judge's reasoning
Almost no bulleted lists: card grids for the loop (s7) and toolkit (s16), 50/50 comparison panels (s6, s10, s14 with oversized 50% numerals), illustration/text splits (s8, s9, s12, s15), a full-bleed quote (s5), and pill rows (s11, s13) — only s9 uses a numbered list, and it sits beside an illustration.
▸Rubric
Real visual elements, not walls of bullets. Mike's question: "does it create good visual elements." Real means: a diagram of the loop, a staged progression, a 50/50 split with illustration, a quote in an organic blob, a comparison built from shapes — something that carries meaning visually. FAIL if the majority of content slides are a title plus a bulleted list.
Q10Readable slides
Judge's reasoning
No text box crosses a slide edge and none is clipped by its container in the render; cream and gold text on the deep teal ground holds strong contrast throughout, illustrations occupy their own regions rather than sitting under copy, and the swooshes behind headlines on s1 and s5 are low-contrast enough not to interfere.
▸Rubric
Every slide is legible as rendered. FAIL if any slide has text running off the edge, text clipped by its container, text over an image or shape at unreadable contrast, or headline and body colliding. (A separate script check already catches overlapping text boxes; this question covers what the geometry check cannot see — overflow, clipping and contrast in the actual render.)