pitch-deck

pitch-deck

A Claude Code plugin that builds investor-grade pitch decks through narrative-first methodology — story before slides, writing before design, meaning before data.

Most pitch decks fail before investors read a single bullet point. The headlines say "Team," "Market," "Financials" — and the investor's pattern-matching brain files it under "generic." This plugin forces a different approach: every headline is a message, every slide earns its place, and the complete headline sequence tells a compelling story even without body text.

What it does

/create — Build a pitch deck from scratch

Runs a structured founder interview (12 questions, one at a time), then builds the deck through 6 gated phases. Each phase requires your approval before advancing. Output: Marp markdown + PDF.

/audit — Stress-test an existing deck

Runs 7 investor-lens tests against any Marp markdown or PDF deck. Outputs a structured report with PASS/WEAK/FAIL per test, an overall grade, and a revised headline sequence.

Why this exists

Founders dump information into slides. Investors make decisions using heuristics. The gap between "everything about my company" and "the 3 things that make you write a check" is where most pitch decks die.

This plugin engineers takeaways instead of dumping information:

• Headlines are messages, not labels — "Team" tells investors nothing. "Team that shipped payments infrastructure to 200M users" makes them lean forward
• Phases force rigor — you can't design slides until the story is locked, and the story doesn't get locked until the foundation research checks out
• Anti-BS rules are hard constraints — no invented metrics, no top-down market numbers, no superlatives without proof. If you can't back it up, it gets flagged
• CoVe verification catches weak spots — four critic roles (Skeptical VC, Domain Expert, Storyteller, First-Time Reader) stress-test each phase before you advance

The headline test

This is the single most important differentiator. Read just the headlines of your deck aloud. Do they tell a complete story? Would an investor take a meeting based on headlines alone?

Generic deck headlines:

1. Company Overview
2. The Problem
3. Our Solution
4. Market Size
5. Business Model
6. Team
7. Traction
8. Competition
9. Financials
10. The Ask

After this plugin:

1. $47B in freight invoices are processed by hand every year
2. We lived this problem — 11 years inside logistics operations
3. One API call replaces 6 hours of manual reconciliation
4. 340 carriers already process through us — $120M monthly volume
5. We win because incumbents can't cannibalize their consulting revenue
6. Net revenue retention: 147%. Customers expand faster than we can onboard
7. Unit economics work today — not "at scale"
8. The competitors VCs will ask about, and why they're stuck
9. $2.4M ARR, 18 months. Path to $10M requires 40 more mid-market accounts
10. $8M to own mid-market freight reconciliation in North America

The first version is a table of contents. The second is an investment thesis.

Phase overview

Phase	Name	Output	Gate
0	Interview	pitch-interview.md	Founder approves summary
1	Foundation	pitch-foundation.md	Founder approves strategy
2	Story	pitch-story.md	Founder approves narrative
3	Objections	pitch-objections.md	Founder approves responses
4	Design	pitch-visual-brief.md	Founder approves visual brief
5	Slides	pitch-deck.md + .pdf	Final review

Audit battery

#	Test	Focus
1	Headlines Tell the Story ⭐	Do headlines alone tell a compelling investment story?
2	Team Placement	Is the team slide optimally positioned for the stage?
3	5-Second Test	Can you state each slide's message after 5 seconds?
4	Narrative Arc	Does the deck build visceral → logical momentum?
5	Anti-BS Check	Any invented claims, missing proof, or hidden competition?
6	Investor Psychology	Are partner talking points and objection responses obvious?
7	Structural Completeness	Are all critical deck elements present?

Requirements

• Claude Code (CLI)
• Marp CLI — npm install -g @marp-team/marp-cli (for PDF rendering)

Installation

From the CLI: