PPT Master is a solo-maintained open source project, driven by priority rather than fixed timelines. This roadmap aligns expectations: the direction of travel, what's in motion now, what may come when real demand shows, and what's intentionally out of scope. Priorities shift with user feedback and real usage signals — no committed delivery windows.
The defining axis is native depth: author or preserve more of PowerPoint's own object model, behavior, and reusable structure, release after release — converging with PowerPoint itself. The positioning charter states the full thesis; the PowerPoint ↔ SVG Mapping Guide records the current boundary honestly, feature by feature.
Today that axis is expressed through four explicit artifact routes: Generate PPTX authors newly designed slides through constrained SVG → DrawingML; Create Template produces reusable Brand / Layout / Deck workspaces; Fill Native PPTX and Enhance Native PPTX preserve existing packages through scoped OOXML operations.
Actively underway or up next — no committed timeline.
- Calibrate the recently landed systems on real decks — multi-deck intake, the material-divergence field, the spot-illustration system, and structured template creation have all shipped; what they need now is real-usage signal, not more mechanism. No pre-emptive thresholds or quotas.
- Prompt slimming — compress per-role prompt token footprint and improve cache hit rate without sacrificing quality. This is the indirect cost/speed lever; the boundary with quality-sacrificing speedups is drawn under Non-goals.
Candidates already evaluated as "worth doing when real demand shows", listed so the intent is public. None is a commitment.
- Keep closing the native-coverage gaps recorded in the mapping guide — release after release, move more "SVG-only" cells toward native PowerPoint structure and behavior.
- Effects on authored preset shapes (e.g. a native drop-shadow) — waits for a precise preset-effect contract plus checker coverage; until then, a stock shape that needs a shadow conservatively stays ordinary SVG.
- Hyperlink authoring in generated decks — hyperlinks already present in source decks survive conversion today; letting the Strategist author new links waits for demand.
- Picture slide backgrounds as native background fill — solid/gradient page backgrounds already export as PowerPoint-native slide backgrounds; the picture case is demand-driven.
One line per month. Full detail lives in the release notes and the commit log.
| When | Theme |
|---|---|
| 2026-03 | Native PPTX route takes shape — the SVG → DrawingML chain becomes usable; chart/layout template indexes ship |
| 2026-04 | Pipeline at scale — topic-only generation, 70 chart templates + three icon libraries, the spec_lock cross-page consistency contract, per-element animation and narration/video export |
| 2026-05 | Visual editing + AI-image systematization — Live Preview with deterministic in-place editing (built on @WodenJay's PR #85), template workspaces from PPTX, the rendering × palette × type image system, LaTeX formula rendering |
| 2026-06 | Mode & visual-style dual catalogs + intake expansion — 5 narrative modes × 18 visual styles (+ custom), content-faithful beautify profile, multi-deck intake, spot-illustration pipeline, web-image quality gates, source-conversion fidelity gains (caption recognition from @suay1113's PR #191, hyperlink preservation distilled from @ZhaoZuohong's PR #155) |
| 2026-07 | Positioning charter + native masters & layouts + token efficiency (v4.0.0) — three-pass staged confirmation UI, real p:sldMaster / p:sldLayout export, --native-charts-and-tables opt-in, motion-export hardening, chart template library compacted |
The directions below come up repeatedly and have been evaluated as not on the path. Listing them is not a value judgment on the underlying need — they simply do not fit this project's product direction. If you specifically need these capabilities, consider other tools or forking.
The Generate PPTX route is built around full control of newly authored shapes, text, and layout. A structured PPTX can inform a reviewed reusable package in two explicit ways: standard / fidelity author a new SVG and Master/Layout system from visual evidence, while mirror materializes a new workspace from the complete set of supported source facts actually present, including unused Layout definitions. Neither path modifies the source PPTX or recovers absent design intent. Generic "open any PPTX and blindly refill every placeholder" remains a different product shape.
The basic need is actually simple: if you just need "replace Excel data into fixed positions in a PPT template", have the AI write a few lines of python-pptx. You don't need this pipeline.
Supported boundaries: Fill Native PPTX (
template-fill-pptx) directly refills selected source slides. Create Template (create-template) derives an internal authored or mirror implementation from the natural-language request and source evidence. Strategist later derives strict/adaptive exporter behavior from the actual template and current content. What remains out of scope is unreviewed, schema-free substitution against arbitrary third-party placeholder systems.
Pixel-fidelity across the four renderers (PowerPoint / Keynote / LibreOffice / WPS) is the project's spine. Switching the default route to native PowerPoint charts breaks that — the same PPTX renders different chart layouts across renderers. Charts as SVG is by design, not a capability gap.
The narrow exception is the data-pptx-replace-with marker: independently planned supported data charts and pure text-grid tables can carry a PowerPoint-native Chart/Table replacement payload when their Design Spec §IX page block says Native-ready: yes; no and incidental microvisuals remain ordinary shapes. §VII only records selected reusable references. Exporting with --native-charts-and-tables activates prepared markers for users who deliberately trade cross-renderer fidelity for a data-backed object and its chart/table-specific editing model — the activated objects preserve the deck's chart-area / plot / axis / gridline / label colors and native table formatting rather than snapping to PowerPoint's default theme (see the v4.0.0 release notes). The default export path and editable SVG-derived shape system are unchanged.
Issue: #111
pip + requirements.txt is the only official install path because it works in every Python environment with no extra learning cost. uv is a fine tool, but making it default raises the bar for new users. If you personally prefer uv, use it in your fork — it won't affect the main line.
Issue: #97
In the cost / speed / quality triangle this project picks quality. ~20 minutes for a high-quality PPTX is the current reasonable point.
Will do: indirect improvements via prompt slimming / cache hit rate. Won't do: trading quality for "throw a few pages together" speed.
If speed-sensitive and quality-tolerant, a zero-setup browser SaaS tool is a better fit.
The product form is a chat-driven workflow / skill inside an agent-capable AI tool (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, VS Code agents, and others).
Won't do: standalone CLI (ppm-style), SaaS web service, Electron shell. Any "make it run independently of chat" proposal will be declined. Chat is the interaction core, not a wrapper.
- Issues: github.com/hugohe3/ppt-master/issues — bugs / proposals
- Discussions: github.com/hugohe3/ppt-master/discussions — usage / experience sharing
- Email: heyug3@gmail.com
Before proposing a new direction, scan the Non-goals above. If your request falls there, it's unlikely to land — but we're happy to discuss other paths to your underlying need.