Presentations

Turn rough notes into a presentation

Notes are written for the person who took them. They skip subjects, use arrows instead of verbs and assume context that lives in your head. Turning them into slides is mostly a job of inferring the argument that the shorthand implies.

Create a presentation with OneCraftWhat shorthand survives, what gets inferred, and the two lines that stop it guessing

Shorthand is expanded, not quoted

An arrow becomes a change over time. A slash between two numbers becomes a rate. A line with no verb gets one. This is the part that makes notes usable, and it is also where a mistake is quietest, because an expanded sentence reads confidently whether or not the expansion was right. Read the first pass for meaning before you read it for wording.

It infers an argument from a list

Notes are usually in the order things were said, which is rarely the order they should be presented. The planner reorders into something that opens, builds and closes, so a decision buried in line nine of your notes tends to arrive near the end where a decision belongs. If your notes are already in presentation order, say so and it is left alone.

Two lines that fix most of the guessing

Name the audience and name the ask. Notes almost never contain either, so without them the deck defaults to an informative register when what you needed was a request for a hiring budget. Adding who is in the room and what you want signed off changes the closing slide, the emphasis on the numbers, and how much background gets included.

Abbreviations you use internally

Team shorthand, internal system names and project code names are kept as written, because inventing an expansion would be worse than leaving the term alone. If an outside audience is reading the deck, spell the term out once in your notes and the expansion carries through to the slide.

Blanks stay blank

A note that says damage claims up without a figure produces a slide that says damage claims are up without a figure. Numbers are never invented to fill a gap, so a deck built from thin notes reads thin, which is the honest outcome. Fill the number in the note, not on the slide, and regenerate.

How it works, in three steps

Step 1
Paste the notes as they are
Do not tidy them first. Fragments and arrows are fine, and the raw order tells the planner what came up together.
Step 2
Add the audience and the ask
Two lines at the top. Who is in the room, and what you want them to agree to.
Step 3
Read the expansions before the design
Check that each shorthand line became the sentence you meant. Fix the ones that did not, then style.

The full walkthrough with screenshots is in the guide Make a pitch presentation with AI.

Limits worth knowing

Notes go in the prompt box, which holds 8,000 characters.
Figures missing from your notes are left missing. Nothing is invented to make a slide look complete.
Slide count is capped at 6 on a free account and 20 on a paid one, so long meeting notes need editing down.
Handwritten notes have to be photographed and attached as an image, which needs a Starter plan and is read by OCR.

See it on a finished piece

Project kickoff deck

9 slides

Quarterly business review deck

10 slides

Sales proposal presentation

11 slides

Questions people ask

Do I need to tidy my notes first?

No. Fragments, arrows and abbreviations are handled. Tidying usually removes the ordering signal that tells the planner what belongs together.

Will it keep my internal jargon?

Yes, as written. Nothing invents an expansion for a term it does not recognise, so spell it out yourself if an outside audience will read the deck.

Can I use a photo of a whiteboard?

Attach it as an image and its text is read by OCR. Handwriting recognition is imperfect, so check the figures. Attachments need a Starter plan.

It reordered my points. Can I stop that?

Say keep my order in the prompt. Explicit constraints are followed reliably, and without one the planner assumes note order is not presentation order.

Make your own presentation

The button opens the generator with this use case already described. Change the wording to match yours, generate, then edit anything you like.

Create a presentation with OneCraft