A prompt to copy
/skill:pcafe turn talk.md into an 8-slide talk in the swiss style. Tell me when npx pcafe check prints PASS.
Naming the file, the audience, the length and what counts as done helps far more than “make it look nice”.
Coding agent · Skill · pi.dev
PCafe × PiThe HTML slide deck skill for Pi
Pi is a small terminal coding agent that loads skills from ~/.agents/skills/ (global) and a project’s .agents/skills/. It reads only names and descriptions at start and the full text on demand, so pcafe costs little context.
Step one
Install PCafe in Pi
- Install with the first command (npx skills), or unpack the skill into ~/.agents/skills/ with the second.
- Restart Pi; it discovers pcafe at start.
Afterwards, open a new chat and ask what the pcafe skill does. If it can tell you, the skill is loaded.
npx skills add Web-Casa/pcafe -s pcafe -g -a pi -yor
mkdir -p ~/.agents/skills && curl -fsSL https://p.cafe/downloads/pcafe-skill.zip -o /tmp/pcafe-skill.zip && unzip -oq /tmp/pcafe-skill.zip -d ~/.agents/skillsStep two
Working with Pi once it is installed
- Say “make a deck with pcafe”; if the model doesn’t open the skill, type /skill:pcafe.
- Pi’s few, direct tools are enough to run npx pcafe check and read the screenshots.
- Any model works; templates and checks live in the skill.
Results
Decks made with PCafe
DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash13 slides
An introduction to object storage14 slides
Apollo 11’s eight days12 slides
The journey of paper14 slides
A decade of solar power13 slides
Coral reefs: cities in the sea13 slidesWhy PCafe
Why use PCafe for slides in Pi
Fixed templates that hold their layout
Pi only writes your content into PCafe’s 270-plus open-source templates; layout, type sizes and colour come from the template, so the deck doesn’t change shape every time.
Delivered only at PASS
Every slide has text limits. Overflow, overlap and tiny type fail the check, and Pi trims or splits slides and checks again until PASS.
One offline HTML file
The result is one HTML file that presents with a double-click and no network; it also exports to PDF and editable PowerPoint.
Questions
PCafe × Pi: questions
Why didn’t Pi use pcafe?
Pi reads a skill only when the task matches its description. Type /skill:pcafe, or say “use the pcafe skill” in the prompt.
Is PCafe free?
The open-source version is free for personal and commercial work and keeps a “Made with PCafe” credit. Pro adds 11 paid template packs and lets you remove the credit.
Can I get a PowerPoint file?
Yes. Have Pi run npx pcafe pptx <name>; the text comes out as editable text boxes. PDF export works too.
Do I need Node.js?
Building the HTML needs Node.js 20.19 or later, and Pi runs the npx commands. Without it, the skill falls back to a storyline and a slide-by-slide outline.
How do I install on Windows?
The npx skills command works in PowerShell too. The unzip one-liners are for macOS and Linux; on Windows, download pcafe-skill.zip and extract it into the matching skills folder under your user folder, for example %USERPROFILE%\.agents\skills.
Other tools
