polygon-pitch-pamphlet

name

polygon-pitch-pamphlet

description

Use when building a Polygon sales document — pitch advert, capability pamphlet, product brochure, or any image-and-quote-led PDF in the spine+nervous-system visual brand. Triggers include "build a pitch pamphlet for [prospect]", "make an advert for [agent name]", revising/extending the existing Tight Factories advert or Purchasing Agent pamphlet, or porting the same pattern to a new agent (Inter-Site Transfer Agent, Daily Brief Agent, etc.).

Polygon Pitch Pamphlet

Status: v1, captures the production pattern shipped on 2026-05-07 (Agent Overview + Purchasing Agent PDFs). Refine on next real use.

Overview

Polygon's pitch documents are image-and-quote-led PDFs in a tight visual language — spine+nervous-system metaphor, charcoal/amber/cyan palette, calm declarative voice, ≤30-word captions. Two existing exemplars are the canonical reference; this skill captures the pattern so the next pamphlet starts at "swap content" not "design from scratch."

Reference exemplars (read these before authoring anything new):

• docs/pitch/output/Agent Overview.pdf — emotional pitch, 10 spreads, dusk-cinematic imagery, no pricing
• docs/pitch/output/Purchasing Agent.pdf — capability deep-dive, 11 spreads, daylight-modern imagery, includes pricing
• docs/pitch/nervous-system-positioning.md — internal strategy doc; never share with clients but use as voice anchor
• docs/pitch/nervous-system-advert.marp.md and nervous-system-pamphlet.marp.md — the rendering sources

When to use

• Build a new pamphlet for a different prospect (same brand, swap specifics)
• Add a new agent to the catalogue (Inter-Site Transfer, Daily Brief, etc.) — extend the killer-app spread pattern
• Revise an existing deck — page-by-page edits to the marp files
• Port to a new industry — keep the pattern, regenerate images with industry-appropriate prompts

Do NOT use for: completely different brand identities, non-Polygon sales material, anything requiring print-shop-grade design (use Figma/Pages with a designer for that).

Document types

Type	Use when	Length	Pricing?	Image register
Advert (overview)	Emotional pitch, broad qualification	8–10 spreads	No (overview only)	Dusk-cinematic
Pamphlet (capability)	Deep-dive on a specific agent / nerve	9–12 spreads	Yes (closes the offer)	Daylight-modern

Send both together — advert as the opener, pamphlet as the detail. Different visual registers (dusk vs. daylight) make them feel like a deliberate pair.

Visual language

	Hex	Use
Charcoal background	#0E141C	Default slide bg
Cream body text	#F5F0E6	Body, h2 in quote blockquotes
Amber accent	#E8A249	Headings, agent action lines, bold highlights
Cyan signal	#7FE4F5 (advert) / #00C8FF (pamphlet)	Pull-quote rule, source attribution, in-image signal trails
Subdued cream	#BFB8AA	Captions on quote-only spreads

Typography: Helvetica Neue / Inter / system-ui. H1 60px (or 96–120px on cover/back-cover). H2 44px (typically inside a blockquote for the pull-quote treatment). Body 22–24px. Caption 18–20px. Letter-spacing slightly tight on headings.

Image-prompt style blocks (paste verbatim into Codex/etc.)

Two registers. Use the dusk-cinematic register for the advert (emotional pitch). Use the daylight-modern register for the pamphlet (capability detail). They're deliberately different so the two PDFs feel like a matched pair.

Dusk-cinematic (for the advert)

Style: cinematic dusk photography of a working furniture factory floor —
warm-lit, slightly analog and nostalgic. Palette: deep charcoal-blue
ambient (#0E141C), warm amber from sodium and incandescent work-lights
(#E8A249), pale cyan signal trails (#7FE4F5) that read like long-exposure
light traces — soft, glowing, never laser-sharp. Generous negative space.
No on-screen text, no UI graphics, no logos, no brand names. People
appear quiet, focused, mid-task — never posed or staged. Real wood, real
steel, real fabric. Subtle film grain. Mood: calm, late-shift, confident,
the room is paying attention.

Daylight-modern (for the pamphlet)

Style: clean modern industrial product photography. Bright overcast
daylight, soft diffuse shadows — no dusk, no warm-amber atmosphere.
Palette: warm off-white concrete (#E8E1D5), light natural wood
(#C9B79A), brushed steel and aluminium (#9DA5AB), crisp digital cyan
(#00C8FF) for signal trails — sharper and more confident than the
dusk-cinematic version. A single warm amber accent (#E8A249) only as
a controlled highlight, not ambient. Minimal grain, modern editorial
photography quality. No on-screen text, no UI graphics, no logos, no
readable signage. People appear focused, mid-task, in clean modern
workwear (denim apron, neutral t-shirt) — never posed. Real materials:
oak, steel, melamine, fabric. Composition: clean lines, generous
negative space, slightly elevated camera angle. Mood: bright, capable,
calm — a workshop where things are running well.

Always paste the style block FIRST, then the scene description. Marp images live and die by consistency, and the style block is what guarantees it across multiple generations.

Spread types (the Marp template library)

Spread	Use for	Marp pattern
Cover	Document title + tagline	<!-- _class: cover --> +  (brightness filter for legibility on bright images) + # Title + *subtitle*
Quote-only	Setup spreads (e.g. "four questions"), pivots, honest positioning	<!-- _class: quote-only --> + # Big quote + body paragraph
Image-right + quote-left	Killer-app spreads (named scenarios)	 + > ## "Quote" + scenario block with amber → action line
Flow-chart	Mid-deck mental-map spread	<!-- _class: flow --> + # Heading +  + caption (CSS class controls image height — image must be referenced via markdown syntax, not HTML img — Marp strips inline <img> styles)
Diptych	"Before/after" or "with/without" full-bleed	<!-- _class: diptych --> +  + ## Centred quote
Pricing	Closes the offer (pamphlet only — not advert)	<!-- _class: quote-only --> + # R[N] per week + **bold amber tagline** + small terms line
Back cover	Brand close	<!-- _class: cover --> + # Polygon + *Unity ERP is the spine. AI agents are the nervous system.* + tagline

The full CSS for these classes lives at the top of nervous-system-pamphlet.marp.md and nervous-system-advert.marp.md — copy the style: | block from there as the starting point.

Voice guidelines

• Captions ≤30 words. Tight. Senior reader scans in 5 seconds.
• Three-beat agent action lines. "Pattern caught. Source traced. Loss stopped." Amber, prefixed with →. Inside a <div class="scenario"> with <span class="agent">.
• Declarative, not narrative. "At 5:30 a.m., your agent scans..." not "What if your agent could scan..."
• "Your agent," not "our agent" or "Matt." Reader-ownership in the body. Matt only on internal-strategy docs.
• "AI agents" explicitly. Don't say just "agents" without naming the AI — the reader needs to know what they're being sold.
• No jargon. "AI models" not "models." "Cancel anytime" not "30 days notice." "Knowledge work" rather than "white-collar."
• Considered messaging. See docs/pitch/nervous-system-positioning.md — silent by default, no spamming, pattern echoes between spreads (e.g., the four-verb "they notice, they push, they escalate, they close" appears in three places).

File organisation

docs/pitch/
├── nervous-system-positioning.md          # internal strategy, never client-facing
├── nervous-system-advert.md               # canonical script (with HTML-comment archive of cut spreads)
├── nervous-system-advert.marp.md          # rendering source for the advert
├── nervous-system-pamphlet.marp.md        # rendering source for the pamphlet
├── images/
│   ├── 01..08-*.png                       # advert images (dusk-cinematic)
│   └── 11..18-pamphlet-*.png              # pamphlet images (daylight-modern)
└── output/
    ├── Agent Overview.pdf                 # client-facing rendered advert
    └── Purchasing Agent.pdf               # client-facing rendered pamphlet

Naming convention — internal source files use long descriptive names (nervous-system-*.marp.md). Output PDFs use short client-facing names (Agent Overview.pdf, Purchasing Agent.pdf).

Render workflow

# Install once (already done):
npm i -g @marp-team/marp-cli

# Re-render after edits:
cd ~/developer/unity-erp

marp docs/pitch/nervous-system-advert.marp.md \
  --pdf --allow-local-files \
  --output "docs/pitch/output/Agent Overview.pdf"

marp docs/pitch/nervous-system-pamphlet.marp.md \
  --pdf --allow-local-files \
  --output "docs/pitch/output/Purchasing Agent.pdf"

Marp gotchas (these will bite if you don't know them)

Gotcha	Symptom	Fix
Marp strips inline style= on <img>	Image renders at unintended size despite explicit style="max-height:380px"	Use a CSS class on a parent section (<!-- _class: flow -->) and target section.flow img { max-height: 360px; ... } in the `style:
--- inside an HTML <!-- comment block is still parsed as a slide separator	Hidden content creates blank slides	Either remove the --- from inside the comment, or restructure so the comment doesn't span a separator.
Cover image too bright; title illegible	Daylit/bright bg images wash out heading text	Apply Marp's image-filter directive: . Native to Marp, no CSS needed.
Portrait images on landscape slides crop or distort	Subject of image off-frame	Use  — the fit modifier preserves aspect and contains within the bounding box.
CSS pseudo-element overlays don't reach ![bg] images	section::after darkening doesn't appear in PDF	![bg] images live in a separate stacking context outside the section. Use Marp's filter directives (brightness, blur, opacity) on the bg image directly instead.

Recipes

Recipe: build a pamphlet for a new prospect

1. Copy docs/pitch/nervous-system-pamphlet.marp.md → new file with the prospect's slug
2. Read the prospect's notes; identify their specific pain points (e.g. inter-site transfer for two-factory client; quality reject capture for upholstery-heavy client)
3. Swap the four killer-app spreads for the agent(s) you're actually selling them. Keep the structural template; only swap the quotes, captions, and image references
4. Update pricing on page 9 if different from R600/wk
5. Render. View. Iterate page by page (the proven workflow is: render → look → tweak one thing → re-render)

Recipe: add a new agent

When extending the catalogue with a new Matt-style agent (Inter-Site Transfer, Production Exception Triage, Daily Control-Tower Brief, etc.):

1. Add a killer-app spread following the proven pattern: ![bg right:50%] + > ## "Big quote — usually a concrete operational moment" + scenario block with → action line
2. Voice anchor: the action line should be three crisp beats matching "Pattern caught. Source traced. Loss stopped." rhythm
3. Generate a new image using the daylight-modern style block + a scene description specific to that agent's domain
4. Update the four-questions spread on page 2 if the new agent surfaces a question the others don't
5. If selling the new agent as a separate tier (R[N]/wk), update pricing page

Recipe: port to a new industry

The pattern is industry-agnostic; only the imagery changes:

1. Keep the structural template, voice, palette, type
2. Adjust the style blocks: swap "furniture factory" / "oak boards" / "upholstery" for the target industry's materials and settings (e.g. "metal fabrication shop, mild-steel sheet stock, welding station")
3. Regenerate all images using the adjusted prompts
4. Adjust the named scenarios in the killer-app spreads to industry-specific examples (PO Q26-779 was due Tuesday → spec-out a real example for the target industry)
5. Keep the spine+nervous-system metaphor — that's brand, not industry

Common mistakes

• Naming Matt in the body. Matt is brand-internal. Body uses "your agent." Matt appears only in the back-cover brand line ("Matt-style agents") and in internal strategy docs.
• Adding pricing to the advert. The advert is overview-only; pricing is what closes the pamphlet. Don't conflate.
• Hyphens in job IDs causing line breaks. "Job J-401" wraps awkwardly across lines. Drop the hyphen → "Job J401". Keep PO numbers (Q26-779) since the year-prefix dash is a real convention.
• Repeating the same image twice in the same deck. Acceptable for v1 if generating new images is blocking, but flag it. Different scenarios deserve different images for full-quality output.
• Verbose captions. ≤30 words. If your caption is longer, you're doing too much on one spread.
• Generic image gen without the style block. The first prompt always pastes the style block. Skipping it produces inconsistent visual register across the deck.

Red flags — STOP and reconsider

• "Just a quick generic pitch deck" → Use this skill or you'll dilute the brand
• "Let's add 5 more pages of detail" → Tight is the brand; if you need detail, write a separate doc
• "Let me just inline-style this image" → Marp strips inline styles. Use a CSS class.
• "We can skip the style block on this one prompt" → Cross-image consistency dies. Always paste the style block.

Testing methodology (for future refinement)

This is v1 — captured from a single production run on 2026-05-07. Genuine TDD-for-skills testing should happen on the next real use:

1. Baseline (RED) — dispatch a subagent: "build a Polygon-branded pamphlet for [new prospect] with [specific brief]" with NO skill loaded. Document what they produce.
2. With skill (GREEN) — same prompt, this skill loaded. Compare outputs. The skill should close the gaps you observed.
3. Refactor — capture rationalisations and brand-drift symptoms in this skill's "common mistakes" / "red flags" sections.

Until then, treat this as a strong reference, not a bulletproof discipline skill.

References

• Reference exemplars: docs/pitch/output/Agent Overview.pdf, docs/pitch/output/Purchasing Agent.pdf
• Source files: docs/pitch/nervous-system-{advert,pamphlet}.marp.md
• Strategy: docs/pitch/nervous-system-positioning.md (internal only)
• Linear: POL-100 (closure engine, dependency for everything pitched here), POL-101–104 (the four pilot agents)
• Memory anchor: project_openclaw_agents.md for the OpenClaw / Matt context the agents run on