CH 25 · Install a Skill, Let dsh Make a PPT for You

Word count~2,760 wordsTime~25 minPrereqCH 03, CH 04, CH 14LevelReproducible

Chapter Goal

This chapter walks you through using dsh to generate a complete PPT. We install a dedicated PPT Skill, then give it a brief, and have it handle everything from outline to layout to generating the web-version PPT, and you can even edit directly in the browser, and export an editable PPTX. After this chapter, you'll know how to have dsh help you make presentations, and how to fine-tune and export the first draft.

Which Skill: dashiai-ppt

This chapter uses dashiai-ppt — a PPT Skill for working professionals, AGPL-3.0 open source, GitHub repo.

Its features:

• 12 visual themes: soft-skeuomorphism, neon purple-green, light/dark code, glass candy, black-gold experiment, deep-blue magazine, high-energy growth, etc. Pick different styles for different types of reports
• 1020 layout pages: dozens of charts, analysis models like SWOT / Porter's Five Forces / Business Model Canvas, architecture diagrams, timelines, image-text galleries — every page you actually need for reporting has a ready layout
• Editable after generation: each page has a console, change text, swap images, adjust module count, change colors, changes auto-save back to the file
• Exportable to PPTX: not images, but real editable PowerPoint files, text boxes and charts can be manually changed
• All local: generation, editing, and export all on the local machine, content not uploaded to server

Step 1: Install the Skill

The full content of this Skill is in the GitHub repo's skills/dashiai-ppt/ subdirectory; we install it the "drop folder" way into dsh's project-level Skill directory <project-root>/.dsh/skills/, not the npx command in the README.

Just say directly in dsh:

Help me install the dashiai-ppt PPT skill; the repo is https://github.com/chuspeeism/dashiAI-ppt-skill, the skill content is in the repo's skills/dashiai-ppt/ subdirectory. Clone this subdirectory to the .dsh/skills/ under the current workspace, and tell me when it's done.

dsh will clone the repo itself and put the skill folder in the right place.

Environment requirements: the local machine must run Node.js 18+ and npm (dependencies auto-installed on first generation); exporting PPTX / PDF needs Chrome / Edge installed locally.

Step 2: Understand the Skill's Workflow

After installation, you can first have dsh briefly introduce the skill's flow, to know what to expect. Just ask:

Briefly introduce the flow of this skill

It will tell you the complete workflow: ask style → finalize content → generate JSON plan → render HTML → validate acceptance → deliver. Simply: you give requirements, it confirms style and assets, generates a plan, renders locally, previews and validates, delivers in format. Fully local, offline-capable.

Step 3: Give a Topic, Generate the PPT

Making a PPT is flexible: if you already have material (e.g. a document, an article, a set of data), you can throw the material directly at dsh and have it make a PPT based on that material; if you don't have ready material, just giving a topic is fine, dsh will plan the content structure itself and confirm step by step.

Here we demonstrate the topic-only method. This chapter we make a sharing PPT on "Everything is a Plugin: DeepSeek Harness Getting Started Guide".

Use dashiai-ppt to make a PPT for me, topic is "Everything is a Plugin: DeepSeek Harness Getting Started Guide", aimed at developers first encountering dsh.

Send this message to dsh. It will follow the skill's flow to confirm style, page count, content structure step by step, then call the generator to render, and finally give you a local preview link.

This is the benefit of a Skill — it solidifies the complete "making a PPT" flow into a clear set of steps, dsh just follows it, no need to figure out from scratch every time what to ask first and what to do next. Below is its generation following the skill spec — first confirm the theme style, then plan the content structure, then generate page by page:

If dependencies need to be installed during generation (e.g. npm install on first run), dsh will run them in the background, not blocking the main task's progress. The picture below shows the main conversation continuing while dependencies are installed in the background:

The reason you can see the background task's execution here is the dsh-better-sidebar plugin installed in CH 17 — it auto-expands and proactively shows what the background is doing. Without this plugin, dsh would still run in the background and you could still trace it in the trajectory, but you wouldn't see what's happening unless you actively look at the trajectory. With the sidebar, what the background is doing is clear at a glance.

After generation is complete, dsh will give you a local preview URL, with the product overview attached — topic, style, page count, output format, page outline all clearly listed:

From sending the prompt to getting a 12-page complete PPT, the whole process took 17 minutes 27 seconds. This is just the effect of casually giving a topic — with the Skill solidifying the flow, dsh follows the steps one by one, no need to figure out from scratch every time what to do first:

Let's see how much it cost. To make this PPT, there were 124 API requests, 10.61M tokens, costing ¥1.17:

DeepSeek as a domestic model, is itself very affordable in pricing, plus dsh's high cache hit technology — in multi-turn conversations, the system prompt, workspace config, historical conversation etc. as prefix almost don't change, can hit the cache every time, the hit portion of input is billed at a much lower rate than normal. Combined, running a complete Agent task is extremely low cost, daily use doesn't hurt at all.

Step 4: Edit in the Browser

After generation is complete, dsh will give you a local web link (similar to http://127.0.0.1:port-number/), opening it in a browser is the web-version PPT editor.

Each page has a console, you can:

• Change text: click any text to edit directly
• Swap images: click an image slot to upload a replacement
• Adjust module count: drag the slider to increase or decrease the modules on the page
• Change layout: select a different layout in the console
• Change color scheme: one-click switch within the style
• Page transition animations: 9 transition animations to choose from

Changes auto-save back to the file. If you're not satisfied, just change it directly, refresh to see the latest.

The picture below is the PPT editor opened in the browser — on the left is the 12-page thumbnail directory, in the middle is the current page, on the right is the console, page layout, transition animation, theme color, module count can all be adjusted directly:

Text can also be edited directly online — click any text area to change, changes auto-save, no need to go back to dsh to regenerate:

Step 5: Export PPTX

When satisfied, in the export menu at the top right of the browser, select PPTX, and you can download a real editable PowerPoint file. The export menu also supports HTML offline package and PDF:

You can also have dsh export directly:

Export the PPT you just generated into a .pptx file, put it in the current workspace, filename deepseek-harness-intro.pptx.

The file will land in the workspace, double-click to open in PowerPoint or WPS to continue editing.

What you learned in this chapter

You pass if you can complete the items below:

• [ ] Install the dashiai-ppt skill to the project-level .dsh/skills/ directory
• [ ] Write a prompt to have dsh generate a complete PPT
• [ ] Know how to directly edit text, swap images, adjust layout in the browser editor
• [ ] Export the .pptx file and open it with PowerPoint