What Is the Eight Confirmations Process in PPT Master's Strategist Role?

The Eight Confirmations process is a mandatory blocking checkpoint where the Strategist role obtains explicit user approval on eight critical design decisions before the PPT Master pipeline generates any presentation artifacts.

PPT Master is an AI-powered presentation generation system that transforms source materials into polished PowerPoint decks through a multi-stage pipeline. The Strategist role acts as the first human-like gate in this workflow, translating raw content into executable design specifications. Before any SVG or PPTX files are created, the Strategist must execute the Eight Confirmations process—a strict validation protocol defined in skills/ppt-master/references/strategist.md that locks in the visual direction and prevents downstream revisions.

The Eight Confirmation Items

The Strategist presents eight specific decisions for user validation, each defined in the role specification and enforced by skills/ppt-master/SKILL.md. These confirmations establish the constraints for every downstream automated step.

1. Canvas Format

The Strategist recommends a specific output format—such as PPT 16:9, Xiaohongshu, or A4 print dimensions. This decision determines the SVG viewBox parameters and final PPTX dimensions, ensuring the generated slides fit the intended distribution channel.

2. Page Count Range

Based on content volume analysis, the Strategist estimates a realistic slide count. This prevents under-building or over-building the deck and guides the outline depth for the Executor phase.

3. Target Audience and Usage Scenario

The Strategist identifies who will view the presentation (executives, public audiences, or internal teams) and the specific presentation goal. This drives tone selection, detail density, and visual hierarchy decisions throughout the pipeline.

4. Style Objective

Users must select from three style families: General Versatile, General Consulting, or Top Consulting. This choice determines color emphasis rules, layout strictness, and narrative flow patterns applied by the Executor.

5. Color Scheme

The Strategist proposes primary, secondary, and accent HEX colors—typically selected from industry-standard color lists. This guarantees PowerPoint-safe contrast ratios and visual consistency across all generated slides.

6. Icon Usage Approach

The confirmation locks the icon library source: Emoji, AI-generated, Built-in library, or Custom. This prevents mixed-library drift and ensures a single visual language across the deck.

7. Typography Plan

The Strategist defines font families for titles, body text, emphasis, and code blocks—always ending with cross-platform safe fallbacks. This prevents automatic font substitution that would break the intended design.

8. Image Usage Approach

This decision determines whether the deck uses no images, user-provided assets, AI-generated imagery, or placeholders. If images are required, the Strategist triggers scripts/analyze_images.py and instructs the Executor how to treat visual assets.

How the Process Works in the Pipeline

The Eight Confirmations function as a ⛔ BLOCKING gate—meaning the pipeline pauses entirely until user input is received. According to skills/ppt-master/SKILL.md (lines 72-76), the workflow follows this strict sequence:

1. Gate Activation: When Step 4 (Strategist Phase) initiates, the agent reads skills/ppt-master/templates/design_spec_reference.md to access the specification skeleton.

2. Recommendation Generation: The Strategist produces concise recommendations for all eight items based on source material analysis.

3. User Presentation: Recommendations are bundled into a single message presented to the user. Because the checkpoint is marked ⛔ BLOCKING, the workflow cannot proceed until the user reviews, edits, or accepts each item.

4. Spec Generation: Upon confirmation, the Strategist writes two critical files:

   • design_spec.md: A human-readable narrative following sections I-XI from the reference template
   • spec_lock.md: A machine-readable contract that downstream agents consume

5. Automatic Execution: After confirmation, the Image Generator, Executor, and post-processing steps run automatically without further user prompts.

This checkpoint represents the only user-interaction point following source ingestion, ensuring high-level visual direction is locked before resource-intensive generation begins.

Technical Implementation and File Structure

The Eight Confirmations process relies on specific files to enforce consistency and persistence:

• skills/ppt-master/references/strategist.md (lines 55-84): Defines the eight items, decision trees, and required user interaction patterns for the Strategist role.

• skills/ppt-master/SKILL.md: Marks the confirmations as a ⛔ BLOCKING step in the pipeline architecture and defines the transition rules to subsequent phases.

• skills/ppt-master/templates/design_spec_reference.md: Provides the structural skeleton (Sections I-XI) that design_spec.md must follow after confirmation.

• skills/ppt-master/templates/spec_lock_reference.md: Serves as the template for the machine-readable contract generated from confirmed decisions.

• skills/ppt-master/scripts/project_manager.py: Creates the project folder structure where design_spec.md and spec_lock.md are persisted after user approval.

Extracting Confirmation Data Programmatically

While the official pipeline handles confirmations internally, you can parse the resulting design_spec.md using custom scripts for debugging or validation purposes. The following Python snippet extracts the eight confirmation values from a generated specification file:

import re
from pathlib import Path

SPEC_PATH = Path("projects/my_deck/design_spec.md")

def load_spec():
    return SPEC_PATH.read_text(encoding="utf-8")

def parse_eight_confirmations(spec_text):
    # The design spec follows the I–XI sections; each item appears as a heading.

    sections = {
        "Canvas format": r"II\. Canvas Specification.*?Format:\s*(.+)",
        "Page count": r"II\. Canvas Specification.*?Page count:\s*(.+)",
        "Target audience": r"I\. Project Information.*?Audience:\s*(.+)",
        "Style objective": r"I\. Project Information.*?Style:\s*(.+)",
        "Color scheme": r"III\. Visual Theme.*?Colors:\s*(.+)",
        "Icon usage": r"VI\. Icon Usage Spec.*?Library:\s*(.+)",
        "Typography plan": r"IV\. Typography System.*?Fonts:\s*(.+)",
        "Image usage": r"VIII\. Image Resource List.*?Approach:\s*(.+)",
    }
    results = {}
    for key, pat in sections.items():
        m = re.search(pat, spec_text, re.S)
        results[key] = m.group(1).strip() if m else "⚠️ not found"
    return results

if __name__ == "__main__":
    spec = load_spec()
    conf = parse_eight_confirmations(spec)
    for k, v in conf.items():
        print(f"{k}: {v}")

This script loads the specification file and uses regular expressions to extract the confirmed values for each of the eight decisions, returning them as a structured dictionary for downstream processing or validation.

Summary

• The Eight Confirmations process is a blocking checkpoint in the PPT Master pipeline that requires explicit user approval before automated generation begins.
• The Strategist role defines eight critical decisions: Canvas format, Page count range, Target audience, Style objective, Color scheme, Icon usage, Typography plan, and Image usage approach.
• The process is enforced by skills/ppt-master/SKILL.md and defined in skills/ppt-master/references/strategist.md.
• Upon confirmation, the Strategist generates design_spec.md and spec_lock.md according to templates/design_spec_reference.md.
• This represents the final human-in-the-loop interaction before automatic execution through Image Generator, Executor, and post-processing stages.

Frequently Asked Questions

What makes the Eight Confirmations a "blocking" checkpoint?

The ⛔ BLOCKING designation in skills/ppt-master/SKILL.md means the pipeline execution halts entirely after the Strategist presents recommendations. No downstream agents—包括 the Image Generator or Executor—can run until the user explicitly confirms or modifies all eight items. This prevents expensive computation on designs that might not meet user requirements.

Can I modify decisions after confirming the Eight Confirmations?

According to the pipeline architecture, the Eight Confirmations represent the only user-interaction point after source ingestion. While you could technically edit design_spec.md or spec_lock.md manually, the designed workflow expects these files to remain immutable once confirmed. Changes would require restarting the Strategist phase from the beginning to maintain consistency between the human-readable narrative and machine-readable contract.

What files are generated immediately after the Eight Confirmations process completes?

Upon confirmation, the Strategist writes two files to the project directory: design_spec.md (a human-readable narrative following sections I-XI) and spec_lock.md (a machine-readable contract). These files are created according to templates stored in skills/ppt-master/templates/ and are consumed by all downstream automation steps.

How does the Strategist determine the initial recommendations for each confirmation?

The Strategist analyzes the source material volume, content type, and implicit requirements to generate initial recommendations for the eight items. These recommendations are defined in skills/ppt-master/references/strategist.md (lines 55-84), which provides decision trees and heuristics for mapping content characteristics to appropriate canvas formats, style objectives, and resource approaches.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "instagit": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "instagit@latest"]
    }
  }
}