When AI slides skip the story

Ask an AI for a presentation, and it usually sends back a full set of slides in one reply. It asks no questions about the story first.

Why I built it

Sumeet Gayathri Moghe wrote an article called Nail Your Narrative. It sets out the steps that good talks follow. You name one Big Idea, picture your audience and choose a story structure. Only then do you build the slides.

I commented that AI already knows these steps. Martin Fowler replied that he had not seen presentations get better with AI. He had a point. The AI knows the steps, but it uses them only when something makes it.

I have ADHD. A long, careful article is exactly the kind of thing I start, agree with and don't finish. A skill walks me through the same steps one at a time, and I can improve the result as I go.

What I built

Story First is an AI skill. A skill is a set of written instructions that teaches your AI one job. This one takes the AI through five steps in order: one Big Idea, an audience persona, a story structure, the talk written out in plain sentences, and only then a plan for the slides.

I built it in Claude Code from my notes on Sumeet's article. It is a single file, and it credits the article and the books behind it.

What happened when I tested it

I gave the same brief to two new chats. The brief asked for a 10 to 15 minute talk on dog training, for teenagers with new dogs. Only one chat had the skill.

• Without the skill, the AI asked no questions. It made a 13-slide deck that covered a lot of ground. It would work well as a handout.
• With the skill, the AI asked me to confirm the Big Idea first. The talk followed one story and taught three skills instead of five. It ended with one thing to try that week.
• I also tested three other briefs. With the skill, every run followed every step. Without it, the runs kept skipping the Big Idea, the story structure or the written draft. The skill added about 30 seconds to each run.

Neither deck is wrong. The skill makes the AI stop and ask what this talk needs to do for this audience.

The skill is free on GitHub, and both decks are in my skill examples. I tell the full story in my LinkedIn article, Give your best practices an install button.