Google Slides Template Surgery

Workflow

1. Read the deck before changing it.

• Inventory slide types, repeated layouts, title patterns, image-heavy slides, and broken outliers.
• Fetch the target slide structure with get_slide before writing.
• Use live object IDs only. Never guess them.

2. Decide whether to patch or rebuild.

• Patch in place when the slide has the right elements but the geometry is bad.
• Duplicate or recreate structure when the slide is too broken for safe incremental edits.
• Prefer one layout pattern at a time instead of broad deck-wide surgery in a single batch.

3. Plan the operation as a small structural batch.

• Keep each batch narrow and intentional.
• Do not mix unrelated edits just because they touch the same slide.
• Copy request shapes from ./references/batch-update-recipes.md instead of inventing them from memory.

4. Verify on representative slides.

• After each structural batch, re-fetch thumbnails for the edited slide and 1-2 sibling slides that use the same pattern.
• Do not assume a successful write means the layout is improved.
• Finish the representative edited slide with visual-change-loop before rolling the pattern out broadly.

5. Roll forward carefully.

• Once a structural pattern works, apply it to the next matching slides.
• Reuse the same margin logic, title placement, and content rhythm across sibling slides.

Structural Rules

• Prefer duplicating a clean slide pattern over endlessly mutating a broken one.
• Prefer deleting or replacing redundant elements over stacking new ones on top of old ones.
• Preserve user content by default. Structural cleanup is not permission to rewrite the narrative.
• Keep batches reversible. If the slide gets worse after a pass, correct the structure before adding more edits.
• If repeated edits are failing, stop and explain what constraint is blocking clean automation.

Common Surgery Cases

Use this skill for:

• rebuilding crowded title/content slides with a cleaner text-and-image split
• replacing a bad placeholder stack with a simpler repeated pattern
• deleting duplicate or stale decorative shapes that keep causing overlap
• normalizing title position, body width, and image frame placement across a section
• duplicating a strong “golden” slide structure and adapting it for sibling slides

Do not use this skill for:

• one-off typo fixes
• simple repositioning on a single slide
• content generation from scratch
• freeform redesign when the user only asked for cleanup

Verification Standard

A structural pass is only done when:

• the target slide no longer has clipping or overlaps
• the new structure looks stable in the thumbnail, not just valid in raw JSON
• sibling slides using the same pattern still look coherent
• no stale elements remain hidden behind the new layout

References

Read these before the first write:

• ./references/template-surgery-playbook.md
• ./references/batch-update-recipes.md