Econ Slides Skill

Turn your economics paper into a professional Beamer talk — one that would not embarrass you at a top seminar.

The punchline slide	The main result

Two slides the skill built cold from a demonstration paper — see the full sample deck (PDF) and speaker script (PDF).

econ-slides is an Agent Skill for Claude Code and Codex. AI-generated slides
often fail twice: the layout is messy, and the talk has no argument. This
skill addresses both. It synthesizes professional presentation guidance from
leading economists, turns the paper's own dependency graph into a talk, and
verifies the result by compiling, measuring the rendered geometry, and looking
at every page before delivery.

Built for economics. Works for any research talk built on evidence, models, and regression tables.

What it does

Paper → talk. Give it a manuscript and a total-session clock from 15 to
90 minutes. It builds the shortest audience path through the question,
answer, necessary empirical or theoretical setup, evidence or proposition,
interpretation, and implication. The order and frame structure remain
paper-dependent.
Speaker scripts. Add a printable rehearsal script keyed to exact frame
titles, timed from the opening through the main deck, synchronized to real
visual builds, and backed by conditional Q&A blocks. The question reserve
follows the genre (20–25% of a conference session, 30–40% of a seminar or job
talk), only an overrun fails, and prose is never padded to fill time.
Discussant decks. A first-class genre, not an afterthought: an
audience-calibrated summary and the strongest titled comments, each ending
in a concrete suggestion—built to the Dallas Fed / ASHEcon discussant norms.
Modify an existing deck. Add topic slides, appendices, discussion, or
polish while treating the compiled target deck as the design contract. The
workflow reverse-engineers and preserves its Beamer style rather than
importing a house theme.
Retarget a venue. The same paper at 15 and 90 minutes is two different
talks, not one deck played fast. The skill keeps, compresses, moves, cuts, or
deepens whole argumentative units rather than scaling every slide equally.

What makes the decks trustworthy

Genre fidelity. A paper-to-talk request stays an author presentation.
Evidence review calibrates verbs and one load-bearing limitation; it does
not quietly turn the opening, title page, and conclusion into a referee
report.
Claim and number provenance. Before outlining, the skill checks prose
against assignment rules, exhibits, table notes, units, and algebra. Every
planned headline is classified as supported, descriptive, conflicted, or
excluded; every magnitude is traced to its table and page. The script cannot
turn "associated with" into "raises."
Rendered-line discipline. Titles and bullets are rewritten to stay on
one rendered line whenever the idea permits. A readable irreducible wrap is
judged in the PDF rather than rejected mechanically; shrinking a whole
slide is never the first fix.
Source-first exhibits. Reuse or crop a legible source exhibit first;
use a native slide table, equation, or concise text next. Rebuild or create
a figure only when necessary, from traceable inputs, with individual visual
QA. Regression tables are reduced to the rows and columns the talk needs.
A real verification loop. compile_deck.py compiles, runs BibTeX or
Biber when the deck has a bibliography, and triages errors;
check_deck.py blocks objective failures such as edge overflow, serious
overfull boxes, broken links, undefined citations or references ([?],
??), and navigation collisions while treating
wrapping, density, columns, emphasis, and whitespace as review prompts.
For a scoped edit, its baseline mode separates inherited defects from new
objective regressions without waiving the visual comparison.
check_script.py audits title order, total-session timing, Q&A separation,
oral style, and real click synchronization. Both PDFs get a page-by-page
visual pass.

See it

The two slides at the top of this page come from the staggered-rollout
sample deck, built for a 30-minute total session. Its
prepared script runs about 23 minutes, leaving about one quarter of the
session for questions.

Browse the staggered-rollout benchmark →. It includes
deck and script PDFs, LaTeX sources, and a structure plan. It uses the
fictional demonstration paper from
econ-paper-review-skill;
see the sample's provenance notes.

The framework is also audited locally on substantively different empirical
and theory papers. Third-party papers and their derived test decks remain
private rather than being shipped with the skill.

Install

Requires Python 3.10+ with PyMuPDF, and a TeX distribution with XeLaTeX
(TeX Live / MacTeX / MiKTeX). If python3 -c "import pymupdf" already works,
there is nothing to install on the Python side. Otherwise, put PyMuPDF in a
dedicated virtual environment (pip install --user is also blocked when your
Python is externally managed, PEP 668) and run the skill's scripts with that
environment's python; uv run --with pymupdf python ... works too. A fresh
PyMuPDF 2.x install also pulls in onnxruntime and numpy (about 265 MB); the
scripts work with pymupdf>=1.26,<2 as well if you want a smaller venv.

Paste this into Claude Code or Codex:

Help me install the econ-slides skill from
https://github.com/hanlulong/econ-slides-skill: clone it to a stable location,
then link its skills/econ-slides folder as an Agent Skill — into
~/.claude/skills/econ-slides for Claude Code and ~/.agents/skills/econ-slides
for Codex (whichever of the two I use).
Verify that xelatex is available, that `python3 --version` is 3.10 or newer,
and that python3 can import pymupdf (PyMuPDF). If xelatex is missing, tell me
which TeX distribution to install (MacTeX, TeX Live or MiKTeX). If the Python
version or the PyMuPDF check fails, create ~/.venvs/econ-slides with a Python
3.10+ and install the repo's requirements.txt there (for example
`uv venv -p 3.12 ~/.venvs/econ-slides && uv pip install -p ~/.venvs/econ-slides -r requirements.txt`),
and tell me to run the skill's scripts with that venv's python. Then confirm
the skill loads.

Or install it as a plugin from the OpenEcon.ai marketplace.

Claude Code:

/plugin marketplace add OpenEconAI/plugins
/plugin install econ-slides@openeconai

On Claude Code 2.1.275 or later, /plugin install econ-slides --marketplace OpenEconAI/plugins
does both in one step.

Codex:

codex plugin marketplace add OpenEconAI/plugins
codex plugin add econ-slides@openeconai

Use one method per client: remove a manual link before installing the plugin.
Plugin skills are namespaced, so Claude Code invokes this one as
/econ-slides:econ-slides; it also triggers on ordinary requests.

Upgrading from 0.1.x

In 0.2.0 the skill moved from the repository root into skills/econ-slides/.
An existing link to the clone root keeps working after git pull, but Claude
Code now loads it as a plugin-style folder (econ-slides@skills-dir, invoked as
/econ-slides:econ-slides). To keep the bare /econ-slides, re-link
~/.claude/skills/econ-slides to <clone>/skills/econ-slides. Codex lists a
manual link to this clone as econ-slides:econ-slides either way, because the
clone carries plugin manifests. v0.1.x told Codex users to link
~/.codex/skills/econ-slides, which Codex still loads: remove that link (or
move it to ~/.agents/skills) before installing the plugin, or Codex lists
the skill twice.

Update or uninstall

Start a new agent session after any of these steps.

Plugin install:

# Claude Code (or /plugin in a session)
claude plugin marketplace update openeconai
claude plugin update econ-slides@openeconai
claude plugin uninstall econ-slides@openeconai

# Codex
codex plugin marketplace upgrade openeconai
codex plugin remove econ-slides@openeconai

Manual or paste-in install (the links point into your clone, so keep the clone
where it is):

git -C /path/to/econ-slides-skill pull                      # update
rm -f ~/.claude/skills/econ-slides ~/.agents/skills/econ-slides ~/.codex/skills/econ-slides # uninstall: removes the links only
rm -rf /path/to/econ-slides-skill ~/.venvs/econ-slides       # optional: the clone and the venv

On Windows, cmd /c rmdir "$env:USERPROFILE\.claude\skills\econ-slides" (and the
same for .agents\skills\econ-slides and a v0.1.x .codex\skills\econ-slides) removes a junction without touching the
clone; avoid Remove-Item -Recurse on a junction.

Manual installation

Clone into a stable location: the links below point at the clone, so
moving or deleting it breaks the install.

macOS / Linux:

git clone https://github.com/hanlulong/econ-slides-skill.git

# PyMuPDF, only if `python3 -c "import pymupdf"` fails: use a dedicated venv
python3 -m venv ~/.venvs/econ-slides
~/.venvs/econ-slides/bin/python -m pip install -r econ-slides-skill/requirements.txt

# Claude Code (global skills directory)
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills
ln -s "$(pwd)/econ-slides-skill/skills/econ-slides" ~/.claude/skills/econ-slides

# Codex (shared agent-skills directory)
mkdir -p ~/.agents/skills
ln -s "$(pwd)/econ-slides-skill/skills/econ-slides" ~/.agents/skills/econ-slides

Windows (PowerShell — use python rather than python3):

git clone https://github.com/hanlulong/econ-slides-skill.git
# PyMuPDF, only if `python -c "import pymupdf"` fails: use a dedicated venv
python -m venv "$env:USERPROFILE\.venvs\econ-slides"
& "$env:USERPROFILE\.venvs\econ-slides\Scripts\python.exe" -m pip install -r econ-slides-skill\requirements.txt
New-Item -ItemType Directory -Force -Path "$env:USERPROFILE\.claude\skills" | Out-Null
New-Item -ItemType Junction -Path "$env:USERPROFILE\.claude\skills\econ-slides" -Target "$PWD\econ-slides-skill\skills\econ-slides"
New-Item -ItemType Directory -Force -Path "$env:USERPROFILE\.agents\skills" | Out-Null
New-Item -ItemType Junction -Path "$env:USERPROFILE\.agents\skills\econ-slides" -Target "$PWD\econ-slides-skill\skills\econ-slides"

With a venv, run the scripts as ~/.venvs/econ-slides/bin/python <skill-dir>/scripts/... (Windows: ...\Scripts\python.exe), or tell the
agent which interpreter has PyMuPDF.

On a minimal TeX (BasicTeX, TinyTeX, or another scheme-basic install), add
the packages the bundled themes, templates, and sample use (run with sudo
if your TeX tree is system-owned):

tlmgr install xetex beamer translator pgf xcolor appendixnumberbeamer booktabs \
  multirow threeparttable tcolorbox environ trimspaces needspace setspace \
  microtype mathpazo palatino fontname sansmathaccent koma-script

Both clients read the same skills/econ-slides/SKILL.md; any agent that can
read it can use the skill. The scripts are plain Python (pathlib throughout,
os.pathsep for TeX paths) and run on macOS, Windows, and Linux;
tests/run-tests.sh needs bash (Git Bash or WSL on Windows).

Use it

Put your paper (PDF, plus LaTeX source if you have it) in the working directory and ask:

Use the econ-slides skill to make a 30-minute total-session conference talk
from this empirical paper, reserving 20–25% for questions.
Use the econ-slides skill to prepare exactly 20 minutes of speaking; the
organizer schedules questions separately.
Use the econ-slides skill to make a 60-minute pure-theory seminar talk.
Use the econ-slides skill to make the talk and a printable speaker script.
Use the econ-slides skill to build my discussion of the attached paper for a
7-minute discussant slot.
Use the econ-slides skill to turn my 90-minute seminar deck into a 30-minute
total-session version for SED while preserving its Beamer style.
Use the econ-slides skill to add slides on the mechanism and a linked appendix
to my existing deck without restyling it.

The skill will show you the claim--evidence ledger and slide plan before
drafting, then deliver the deck .tex/PDF, an optional script .tex/PDF, and
a note on where every headline claim and number came from.

Themes

Three bundled looks plus a stock-theme adapter, one semantic interface — a finished deck switches themes by changing one \usepackage line:

Theme	Look	For
`econ-slides-house` (default)	No chrome, centered message-or-object titles, Palatino math, Okabe–Ito palette	Research talks
`econ-slides-clean`	Near-monochrome, left titles over a thin rule	Zero visual signature
`econ-slides-boxed`	Navy title bar, structured blocks	Discussions, policy audiences
`econ-slides-compat`	Any stock Beamer theme you prefer	Madrid, metropolis, CambridgeUS, institutional themes

Starting a new deck with a stock theme? \usetheme{Madrid} followed by
\usepackage{econ-slides-compat} keeps that look and adds the semantic
interface. Editing an institutional or personal deck? Keep its existing
preamble, engine, macros, spacing, and visual language. See
skills/econ-slides/themes/README.md.

What's inside

.claude-plugin/plugin.json   Claude Code plugin manifest
.codex-plugin/plugin.json    Codex plugin manifest
skills/econ-slides/          the skill itself (link this folder for a manual install)
  SKILL.md                   the workflow: intake → read → plan → draft → verify → deliver
  references/
    talk-structures.md       adaptable audience paths and genre-aware 15–90 minute budgets
    discussant.md            the discussion genre: skeleton, typical speaking allocations, tone rules
    slide-rules.md           rendered layout guidance: titles, spacing, math, color
    beamer-layout-mechanics.md
                             how source edits reflow the compiled frame
    existing-deck-workflow.md
                             add, polish, discuss, or retarget without restyling
    exhibit-surgery.md       regression table → slide table; figures; number provenance
    source-integrity.md      claim↔evidence ledger; identification, model, and policy checks
    design-checks.md         what DiD, RD, IV, shift-share, synthetic control, and RCT slides must show
    speaker-script.md        timing, oral craft, click sync, Q&A, and printable QA
    style-guide.md           themes, file engineering, build and delivery conventions
  themes/                    three bundled looks + stock-theme compatibility adapter
  templates/                 optional empirical, theory, discussion, and script starters
  scripts/
    compile_deck.py          XeLaTeX compile loop: BibTeX/Biber, error triage
    check_deck.py            rendered geometry audit with hard blockers + score
    check_script.py          deck/script sync, timing, oral-style, and click audit
    crop_figure.py           crop a source figure when no standalone asset exists
tests/                       cross-theme renders + negative deck/script fixtures
evals/                       trigger cases for claude plugin eval
docs/sample-talk/            the staggered-rollout benchmark deck and script
requirements.txt             PyMuPDF for the scripts

What it does not do

It will not write your paper's content, invent a number that is not in your materials, or promise results your paper does not contain. It also will not put a literature-review section in the main line of a talk: the guides agree on that ("You don't need any literature review or motivation in a seminar", Cochrane), and the skill states the marginal contribution against the closest papers instead (Piazzesi).

Related projects

econ-paper-review-skill — the referee-report sibling: that skill judges the paper, this one presents it
econ-writing-skill — writing the paper in the first place
awesome-ai-for-economists — the broader toolbox

Acknowledgments

The craft rules synthesize public guides by
Jesse Shapiro ("How to Give an Applied Micro Talk"),
Rachael Meager (public-speaking slides),
Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham,
John Cochrane ("Writing Tips for Ph.D. Students", §4 Seminar presentations),
Dick Startz,
Marc Bellemare,
Monika Piazzesi,
Alex Tabarrok ("How to Give a Great Seminar"),
David Evans, Darren Lubotsky,
Donald Davis ("What Makes for a Successful Paper and Seminar?"),
Keith Head, and the
Dallas Fed (written for its undergraduate Economic Scholars Program) and
ASHEcon discussant guides. The verification
approach learns from beamer-skill
(PDF-render visual auditing) and
Pedro Sant'Anna's workflow
(executable quality gates); TikZ placement rules adapt ideas from Scott
Cunningham's MixtapeTools. The implementation is original; public guides are
linked for attribution rather than bundled or reproduced.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.

If this skill saves you a slide-panic night before a seminar, star the repo so other economists find it — and if it produces an ugly or dishonest slide, open an issue. Bad slides are bugs here.