| name | linkedin-carousel-generator |
| description | Generates a 13-slide LinkedIn carousel (a "document post" — PPTX/PDF) that showcases an intelligent textbook's key features, with real screenshots, mascot art, and metrics pulled from the project. Use when the user wants a LinkedIn slideshow/carousel/document post for a textbook, as opposed to linkedin-announcement-generator which produces post *text* only. |
| license | Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) |
| model | sonnet |
LinkedIn Carousel Generator
Generates a 13-slide LinkedIn carousel — LinkedIn calls this a "document post" — that
visually walks a reader through what makes an intelligent textbook worth exploring. Unlike
linkedin-announcement-generator (which writes the post's caption text), this skill produces
the artifact itself: a square, mobile-readable slide deck the reader swipes through in
their feed, built from the project's real metrics, mascot art, and screenshots.
When to Use This Skill
Use this skill when the user says things like:
- "Make a LinkedIn carousel/slideshow for this textbook"
- "Create a LinkedIn document post"
- "I want a slide deck I can upload to LinkedIn"
Do not use this skill when the user wants only the caption/post text — use
linkedin-announcement-generator for that (the two are often used together: carousel as the
attached document, announcement text as the post copy, with the carousel referenced instead
of a bare link).
Do not use textbook-to-presentation-generator for this — that skill builds a 25-35 slide
lecture deck for live classroom delivery with speaker notes. This skill builds a much
shorter, image-heavy, no-speaker-notes deck meant to be read silently on a phone in a feed.
Prerequisites
- Node.js installed, with
pptxgenjs installed locally in the output directory
(npm install pptxgenjs)
- An intelligent textbook project with:
mkdocs.yml (site name, description, theme palette)docs/about.md (the "Why This Book" narrative)docs/learning-graph/book-metrics.json (canonical metrics — see
book-installer's bk-generate-book-metrics if missing)docs/img/mascot/ with the character sheet and pose PNGs (see book-installer's
learning-mascot guide if the project has no mascot yet)docs/license.md and docs/img/license.png- At least one MicroSim under
docs/sims/, and (ideally) a learning-graph viewer
MicroSim (commonly docs/sims/graph-viewer/)
~/.local/bin/bk-capture-screenshot available (installed by microsim-utils) for the two
screenshots this skill needs- Python 3 with Pillow (
pip install pillow) for cropping the learning-graph screenshot
If any prerequisite is missing, tell the user which one and point at the skill that creates
it rather than improvising a substitute (e.g. don't hand-draw a learning graph image if
book-metrics.json and a real graph viewer exist).
The 13 Slides
| # | Slide | Content source | Image source |
|---|
| 1 | Cover | mkdocs.yml site_name / site_description | docs/img/cover.png (if present) + mascot welcome.png |
| 2 | Why This Book | docs/about.md → "Why This Intelligent Textbook" section | mascot thinking.png or welcome.png, floated left |
| 3 | Learning Graph | docs/learning-graph/book-metrics.json (concepts, taxonomy categories, edges) + docs/learning-graph/index.md | Zoomed crop of the graph-viewer MicroSim screenshot, floated right |
| 4 | Coverage Summary | Chapter count from book-metrics.json + 4-6 standout chapter titles from mkdocs.yml nav | Big-number treatment, no image needed |
| 5 | Engagement Strategy | The "Read → Run → Modify" Skulpt-lab cycle (or the project's equivalent hands-on loop) from CLAUDE.md / CONTENT-GENERATION-GUIDELINES.md | 3-icon row, deliberately NOT a wall of text |
| 6 | Mascot Summary | Mascot character sheet (docs/img/mascot/character-sheet.md) | Grid of pose PNGs with a 2-4 word role label under each |
| 7 | MicroSim Count | microsims count from book-metrics.json + one-sentence definition of "MicroSim" | Screenshot of one flagship MicroSim (confirm which one with the user) |
| 8 | Supplementary Content | glossaryTerms, faqs, quizQuestions, references counts from book-metrics.json | 4-icon stat row |
| 9 | License | docs/license.md license type | docs/img/license.png + note on customizing colors/logo/mascot for another school |
| 10 | Adaptivity | How Claude Skills add whole new chapters/lessons consistent with the existing book (course-description → learning-graph → chapter generators) | Simple pipeline diagram (3-4 boxes) |
| 11 | Continuous Enrichment | Forward-looking: agents proposing content/MicroSim variants, measured via analytics/A/B testing, phrased as a capability the framework supports, not a claim of an existing automated pipeline | Icon-based, light touch |
| 12 | Summary of Benefits | A recap checklist of the strongest points from slides 2-11 — the 5-6 most compelling facts, each condensed to a single bolded phrase (e.g. "450 concepts, 0 dependency violations", "31 interactive MicroSims", "Free & open source") | none — checklist pattern, no image needed |
| 13 | Closing CTA | Site URL, GitHub repo URL, "free & open source" | mascot celebration.png, dark background matching slide 1 |
This mapping is a strong default, not a rigid template — if the project lacks one of these
elements (no stories, zero equations, etc.), drop or substitute a slide rather than showing a
zero. See references/content-sourcing.md for the exact extraction commands for every slide.
Slide 12 exists to close the loop before the CTA: by slide 11 the reader has seen ten
different facts in ten different visual styles — slide 12 pulls the single strongest claim out
of each of slides 2-11 into one scannable list, so a reader who only skims gets the whole
pitch in five seconds before hitting the ask on slide 13. Pick the best fact per slide, not
every fact — this slide fails if it turns back into a wall of text.
Workflow
Step 1: Gather Source Material
Read, in parallel:
mkdocs.yml — site_name, site_description, site_url, repo_url, and
theme.palette.primary / theme.palette.accent (drives every slide's color scheme)docs/about.md — pull the "Why This Book" / "Why This Intelligent Textbook" sectiondocs/learning-graph/book-metrics.json — the canonical metrics object (same file
linkedin-announcement-generator and readme-generator use — keep numbers consistent
across all three artifacts)docs/img/mascot/character-sheet.md — name, species, and the pose tabledocs/learning-graph/color-config.json (if present) — taxonomy category colors, used as
a small legend on the learning-graph slidedocs/license.md — license type and URLmkdocs.yml nav — chapter list, to hand-pick 4-6 standout titles for slide 4
If book-metrics.json is missing or stale, regenerate it first (bk-generate-book-metrics)
rather than estimating numbers.
Step 2: Capture the Two Required Screenshots
Learning graph (slide 3): Run bk-capture-screenshot against the graph-viewer MicroSim
(commonly docs/sims/graph-viewer/) at a large window size so labels are legible when cropped:
~/.local/bin/bk-capture-screenshot docs/sims/graph-viewer
The full-graph screenshot shows all concepts at once — too dense to read at slide/thumbnail
size. Crop to a readable cluster of 15-25 nodes that shows concept labels and a spread of
taxonomy colors, using scripts/crop-screenshot.py:
python3 scripts/crop-screenshot.py docs/sims/graph-viewer/graph-viewer.png \
linkedin/slides/learning-graph-zoom.png --box 300,200,1400,1000
Adjust the --box left,top,right,bottom coordinates by opening the full screenshot first —
don't guess blindly. If no crop region looks clean (e.g. the graph is too sparse or labels
overlap everywhere), fall back to asking the user to manually pan/zoom the live viewer in a
browser and take their own screenshot.
Flagship MicroSim (slide 7): Ask the user which MicroSim best represents the book if it
isn't obvious (prefer one with strong visuals — turtle graphics, a chart, a network — over a
plain form-based one), then:
~/.local/bin/bk-capture-screenshot docs/sims/<chosen-microsim>
Step 3: Confirm the Outline Before Generating
Before writing any slide code, show the user:
- The 13-slide plan with the specific numbers it will display (e.g. "38 chapters, 450
concepts, 31 MicroSims, 338 glossary terms")
- Which chapters you picked to highlight on slide 4
- Which MicroSim you picked for slide 7
- Which 5-6 facts you picked for the slide 12 benefits recap
This is a quick sanity check, not a full design review — the numbers are objective (pulled
from book-metrics.json), but the chapter/MicroSim/recap picks are subjective and worth a
10-second confirmation before building 13 slides around them.
Step 4: Set Up the pptxgenjs Project
mkdir -p linkedin
cd linkedin && npm install pptxgenjs
Use a square 10in x 10in slide (pptx.defineLayout({name:'SQUARE', width:10, height:10}))
— LinkedIn document posts render best at 1:1 on mobile feeds. If the user prefers the taller
4:5 format some carousels use, use width:8, height:10 instead; confirm with the user only if
they express a preference, otherwise default to square.
Step 5: Build Each Slide
Read references/slide-patterns.md for the nine reusable pptxgenjs slide patterns (title/
cover, mascot-aside, image-aside, big-numbers, icon-row, pose-grid, badge-callout, checklist
recap, closing CTA) and references/content-sourcing.md for exactly which field feeds which
slide. Map the 13 slides in the table above onto these patterns — several slides reuse the
same pattern with different content (e.g. slides 2, 3, 9 are all variants of "image on one
side, text on the other").
Design rules — LinkedIn carousels are read on a phone, not projected:
- No more than ~25 words of body text per slide (this is a stricter cap than a lecture deck)
- Minimum 18pt body text, 36pt+ for headlines — small text is illegible in the LinkedIn
in-feed thumbnail
- One idea per slide, always
- Dark background (primary color) for slides 1 and 13 only — bookends the deck; slides 2-12
stay light/white for readability and print/PDF friendliness
- Use the project's actual
theme.palette.primary / accent from mkdocs.yml, not generic
blues
Step 6: Generate and Verify
- Run the Node.js script to produce the
.pptx
- Confirm exactly 13 slides were produced
- Open each slide (or export slide 1, 3, 6, 7, 12, and 13 as PNGs) and visually check that no
text overflows its box and that images aren't stretched or pixelated
- Report slide count and file size to the user
Step 7: Prepare for LinkedIn Upload
LinkedIn's document-post uploader (the icon in "Start a post" that looks like a page/document,
distinct from the photo icon) accepts .pptx, .ppt, .pdf, .doc, and .docx directly —
no PDF conversion is required. If the user wants a smaller file or to strip editable
metadata before sharing, offer to convert with LibreOffice if it's installed:
soffice --headless --convert-to pdf --outdir linkedin linkedin/<kebab-title>-carousel.pptx
Tell the user LinkedIn will also ask for a document title shown above the carousel in the
feed — suggest a short, benefit-led title (e.g. "13 Things That Make This Python Textbook
Different"), not the book's formal title.
Remind the user of the same rule from linkedin-announcement-generator: the post caption
should not contain the external site link (LinkedIn suppresses reach on posts with links in the
body) — but a URL printed as text on slide 13 of the document itself is fine, since it's
not a clickable hyperlink in the post body. If they're also posting caption text, hand off to
linkedin-announcement-generator and tell them to paste the site URL as the first comment,
same as always.
Output
{project-root}/linkedin/
├── generate.js # pptxgenjs generation script
├── <kebab-title>-carousel.pptx # the deliverable
└── slides/
├── learning-graph-zoom.png # cropped learning-graph screenshot
└── microsim-preview.png # flagship MicroSim screenshot
Keep this directory outside docs/ (sibling to it, like presentation/ in
textbook-to-presentation-generator) so MkDocs never tries to build it into the site.
Quality Checklist
Troubleshooting
Issue: Learning-graph screenshot is blank or shows a loading spinner
Solution: The graph-viewer MicroSim needs more render time — see
microsim-utils's screen-capture reference for increasing the timeout.
Issue: Cropped learning-graph image still looks too dense to read
Solution: Increase the screenshot's --window-size before cropping (more native pixels
per node), or ask the user to manually zoom the live viewer and screenshot that.
Issue: book-metrics.json is missing
Solution: Run bk-generate-book-metrics (via book-installer) before proceeding —
don't estimate or recount content by hand.
Issue: Project has no mascot yet
Solution: Point the user at book-installer's learning-mascot guide first; slides 2
and 6 depend on mascot art existing.
Related Skills
- linkedin-announcement-generator — writes the post caption text; often paired with this
skill's carousel as the attached document
- textbook-to-presentation-generator — the long-form lecture-deck sibling; reuse its
pptxgenjs setup patterns but not its 25-35 slide scope or speaker-notes step
- microsim-utils (screen-capture reference) — the
bk-capture-screenshot tool this skill
depends on for slides 3 and 7
- book-installer (learning-mascot, book-metrics guides) — creates the mascot art and
metrics file this skill reads
- readme-generator — another consumer of the same
book-metrics.json, useful for
cross-checking that numbers stay consistent across all generated artifacts
