# Cut my slide deck down without losing the message

Shrinks a long presentation to a target length, such as half the slides or the 7 most important, keeping the story intact.

- Topic: Presentations & Public Speaking
- Framework: Few-Shot
- Level: Standard
- Tags: Presentations, Communication, Fill-in Template
- Source: https://www.thinkwithprompt.com/prompts/cut-my-slide-deck-down-without-losing-the-message

## Prompt

```text
Help me cut my presentation down without losing the message.

**My presentation:** [PASTE slide titles and content, in order]
**Target:** [e.g. "7 slides", "half the current length", "10 minutes"]
**Audience and purpose:** [WHO, and what I need from them]
**Slides that must stay:** [e.g. "the pricing slide", or "none"]

Steps:
1. State the core message of the deck in one sentence.
2. Score each slide on how much it moves the audience toward that message and the ask: essential / supporting / nice-to-have.
3. Find slides that can merge (same point, overlapping data), slides that are activity reporting, and slides that only matter if someone asks.

Return:
1. A table of every original slide: | # | Slide | Verdict: keep / merge into # / move to appendix / cut | Reason |
2. The new deck at the target length: each slide's headline (full-sentence takeaway), what it now contains, and which original slides fed into it.
3. A check that the shorter deck still has an opening, the key evidence, and a clear ask.
4. The appendix list: cut content worth keeping as backup for Q&A.
5. What the audience loses with the cut, if anything, and how to cover it verbally.

Don't change any facts or numbers while condensing; when merging slides, keep the original figures exactly.
```

## What to fill in

- PASTE slide titles and content, in order
- e.g. "7 slides", "half the current length", "10 minutes"
- WHO, and what I need from them
- e.g. "the pricing slide", or "none"

Free to copy and use. From ThinkWithPrompt (https://www.thinkwithprompt.com/), a library of 2,663 curated AI prompts.