Last reviewed: 2026-10-14 · Last updated: 2026-10-14 · Change: major (community PR wave 2026-10-14: PPTX corpus, presenter and show controls, review navigation, starter decks, Grid Options and New Window, WordArt gallery and handles, pen pressure; beta items 9 and 10 narrowed; duplicated rows and headers folded; previous: minor, core-workflow alpha gate added) · Target: Microsoft PowerPoint for Mac 16.113 (Microsoft 365)
Forward-looking: where DeckCraft is going and in what order. The one-page summary is ROADMAP.md; every shortfall is in gaps.md; numbers are in target-app-parity.md. Hours are Opus 5.5 agent wall-clock hours.
What a typical PowerPoint user does every day, checked end to end on macOS, the main platform
(craftrules standards/progress-docs.md, "The core-workflow gate"). Every workflow passes, so
DeckCraft stays alpha. The "partial" rows don't block the workflow, but they are its weakest
points and lead the beta plan.
| Core workflow | Works end to end? | Evidence | Hours to full pass |
|---|---|---|---|
| Build a deck from scratch (theme, layouts, titles and bullets, shapes, pictures from file), save, close and reopen it | yes | Commands for all of it; .deckcraft and .pptx round-trip tests (crates/pptx/tests/roundtrip.rs, crates/format); AutoRecover. Close discards edits without asking (#60, PR #75); image paste fails on Windows/Linux (#53), though insert-from-file works |
1–3 |
Open a colleague's .pptx, edit it, save it back as .pptx that PowerPoint opens |
partial (not blocking) | The reader is lenient and keeps unknown objects. Files open in PowerPoint without repair (checked 2026-10-06). But only generated decks have been tested; text inside EMF/WMF pictures is missing; comment threads, media options and rewind are lost (#70, #74, #77) | 31–55 |
| Present: full-screen show with transitions, animations, media, presenter view with notes, next slide and timer | yes | 48/48 transitions, 64 effects, triggers, builds, media playback, presenter window, See All Slides and zoom. The presenter timer pauses and resets, and notes have a size control. A custom show plays only its slides. Typing a slide number during the show shows it, and Enter goes there. Presenter view isn't placed on the second display automatically (drag it there; #433) | 2–4 |
| Add business content: tables, charts with their data, simple diagrams | partial (not blocking) | Tables with styles, merge/split, all D or P. Charts insert with the common types and edit data in the Chart Data dialog (P0 partial); SmartArt is basic (pre-drawn shapes) | 12–20 |
| Share the deck: PDF of slides, notes or handouts; images | yes | file.export PDF with text layer, links, bookmarks, handouts 1–9; PNG/JPEG. Artwork is raster in the PDF; no direct print (print the PDF) |
10–16 |
| Review: comments with replies, resolve, spelling | partial (not blocking) | Comments, replies and resolve work and survive .deckcraft and .pptx (#70); Previous and Next walk every slide and the pane lists them; spelling uses installed Hunspell dictionaries (only a short built-in list where none is installed) |
4–8 |
- Stop losing work and crashing: land Close's save prompt (#60, PR #75), the Windows GPU startup crashes (#40, #59), image paste on Windows/Linux (#53). 6–12 h.
- PPTX on real decks: the owned corpus (
crates/pptx/tests/corpus*.rs) round-trips decks we author: tables, charts, animations, media, sections, masters and layouts, comments, links and actions, custom shows, rotated groups, inherited placeholders, text effects and body layout, theme effects, fills, bevels, connectors, 3-D models and animation bounce end, and keeps notes- and handout-master text, paragraph defaults and action sounds. Still open: decks from outside this repo, media options and rewind on save (#74, #77), relationship-bearing SmartArt and OLE (#203), EMF+ records and SVG. 31–55 h. - Review the open PRs: equations (#55), browser print (#66), Morph alignment (#67), macOS open-with (#68), font lookup (#80), Ukrainian (#34, after the catalog exists). 4–8 h.
Beta means ~75% ready for real work and opening and saving PowerPoint's .pptx reliably
(craftrules standards/progress-docs.md). Ranked:
| # | Work | Hours | Moves |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Stability: #60, #40/#59, soak and fuzz the editor | 10–20 | Stability 60 → 85% |
| 2 | PPTX real-deck corpus and fixes | 20–35 | File formats 58 → 75% |
| 3 | PPTX round-trip losses (#70, #74, #77), .potx/.ppsx/.pptm content types, MicroType embedded-font subsets |
8–15 | File formats → 80% |
| 4 | EMF/WMF and SVG pictures | 8–14 | File formats, Pictures |
| 5 | Vector PDF, printing | 10–16 | File formats, Files |
| 6 | Localization infrastructure + zh-Hans, es, fr, de, ja (with IME) | 27–46 | Localization 8 → ~40% |
| 7 | Font weights (#69), image paste (#53), Tab in text (#78) | 6–11 | Features |
| 8 | Charts: data grid, elements | 6–10 | Features |
| 10 | Presenter view on the right display, swap displays | 2–4 | Hardware, Slide show |
| 9 | Animation Pane: preview from the selected effect, effect options (the timeline is in) | 4–7 | Features |
| 11 | Native macOS menu bar, Format Shape pane depth, start screen and window chrome fixes | 13–22 | UI/UX 60 → 75% |
| 12 | Performance baseline and the obvious fixes | 4–8 | Performance |
| Total | ~120–210 | Ready ~55% → ~75% |
Parallelizes well: 1 (engine/app), 2–5 (pptx, render, pdf), 6 (ui-egui catalogs), 8–11 (UI) touch different crates. Needs a human: the owner opening PPTX outputs in PowerPoint and making reference renders, a Windows tester with the affected GPUs, native speakers to review translations.
SmartArt depth, the remaining animation effects and motion paths, edit-point segment types and
3-D depth, bundled proofing dictionaries, Zoom depth, recording, video export, legacy .ppt import
and .odp (owner decision), GPU rasterization, hardware video decode, pen tilt (pressure already
scales ink width) and pinch zoom, the other 21 languages with RTL mirroring, a larger template
gallery (six original starters ship), and local AI features (owner decision on models). Itemized
with hours in gaps.md.
From the local execution plan (plan/execution-plan.md, gitignored). Status as of 2026-10-10.
| # | Milestone | Status | Open |
|---|---|---|---|
| M0 | Skeleton and vertical slice | done | |
| M1 | Editing core | done | |
| M2 | PPTX import/export | done for generated decks | real-deck corpus, round-trip losses |
| M3 | Shapes complete | mostly | edit points, Format Shape pane depth, bevel/3-D |
| M4 | Design | mostly | Notes/Handout masters, variants, Designer |
| M5 | Pictures and media | mostly | SVG/EMF, remove background, compress, icons, WMA/WMV |
| M6 | Transitions and animations | mostly | Animation Pane timeline, remaining effects, transition sounds |
| M7 | Slide show | mostly | second-display placement, laser, record |
| M8 | Tables and charts | partly | chart data grid, elements, chartex types, draw table |
| M9 | SmartArt, equations, WordArt | partly | SmartArt layouts and PowerPoint-diagram fidelity, equations (PR #55); the text pane, warp gallery and warp handles are in |
| M10 | Views | done | Arrange All (grid options and New Window are in) |
| M11 | Output | partly | vector PDF, SVG, GIF, MP4, print |
| M12 | Review | partly | dictionaries, AutoCorrect, find/replace dialog, compare |
| M13 | Automation and CLI parity | done | |
| M14 | 1.0 polish and release | partly | i18n, native menu bar, signed releases done (v0.4.0) |
Before the craftrules stages existed, DeckCraft defined "alpha" as: install a signed build on
macOS, Windows or Linux, make a real deck from scratch or from a PowerPoint file, present it with
transitions, animations and media, save back to .pptx/PDF without losing work, and hit no crashes
on common paths. On 2026-10-07 it was ~80% there with these blockers:
| Blocker (2026-10-07) | Status 2026-10-10 |
|---|---|
| First real release run: signing, notarization, installers verified on each OS | Signed releases v0.1.0–v0.4.0 published; installers not hand-checked on each OS; Windows startup crashes on some GPUs (#40, #59) |
| PPTX fidelity on a corpus of real decks | Owned corpus checks in CI (tables, charts, animations, media, sections, masters, comments, links, custom shows, groups, inherited placeholders, text effects, body layout, theme effects, fills, bevels, connectors, 3-D models); notes- and handout-master text kept. Decks from outside this repo and #74/#77 stay open; beta item 2 |
| Presenter view and Animation Pane polish | Still open; beta items 9 and 10 |
| Soak and fuzz the editor | Still open; beta item 1 |
| UI fidelity pass on the most-used ribbon groups and dialogs; first run | Partly (start-screen fixes #20, #49); beta item 11 |
| Mascot app icon, README screenshots, user docs | App icon (with a scalable SVG, #29) and README screenshots in place; user docs open |
By the standard's definitions DeckCraft is alpha (~55% ready); these blockers now feed the beta plan above.
| Date | Change | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-15 | trivial | PPTX trigger click steps survive save, including by-paragraph builds. Interactive-deck gaps remain media actions, audio triggers and click-box geometry; milestone scope and feature scores unchanged |
| 2026-10-14 | trivial | M13 reliability: remote MCP validates IDs and envelopes, caps replies and rejects incomplete frames; #718 |
| 2026-10-14 | minor | Community PR wave folded: one Review gate row, one Current focus item 2, one beta row each for items 9 and 10 (timeline and timer controls are in), one after-beta paragraph, one M9 and M10 row, one corpus row in the 2026-10-07 history |
| 2026-10-13 | trivial | Beta item 3: embedded fonts are in, except MicroType Express subsets |
| 2026-10-13 | minor | M9: the WordArt Transform gallery applies a text warp; adjust handles stay open |
| 2026-10-13 | trivial | Owned PPTX corpus check started; notes-master header and footer kept. Beta item 2 stays open for a larger corpus |
| 2026-10-13 | trivial | Owned PPTX corpus covers comments, links and actions, custom shows, rotated groups and inherited placeholders. Beta item 2 stays open for a larger corpus, embedded fonts and #70/#74/#77 |
| 2026-10-13 | trivial | Owned PPTX corpus covers text effects, body layout, theme effects, fills, bevels and connectors. Beta item 2 stays open for a larger corpus, embedded fonts and #70/#74/#77 |
| 2026-10-14 | trivial | Current focus: corpus_media.rs keeps 3-D models and animation bounce end; the real-deck corpus stays open |
| 2026-10-14 | trivial | Chart trendlines are drawn. The charts gap stays open for the data grid, chartex and secondary-axis export; the real-deck corpus (item 2) stays open |
| 2026-10-14 | trivial | Chart trendlines round-trip in an owned corpus slice; the real-deck corpus (item 2) stays open |
| 2026-10-14 | trivial | Review workflow: previous and next comment across the deck |
| 2026-10-14 | minor | After beta: six original starter decks exist; a larger template gallery remains |
| 2026-10-14 | trivial | View: Zoom dialog (percent or Fit) |
| 2026-10-13 | trivial | Owned PPTX corpus covers tables, charts, animations, media, sections and masters; handout-master text kept. Beta item 2 stays open for a larger corpus |
| 2026-10-14 | trivial | Present workflow notes go to slide number entry |
| 2026-10-14 | trivial | Present workflow notes custom show playback |
| 2026-10-14 | trivial | Present workflow notes presenter timer pause/reset, clock and notes size. Display placement stays open |
| 2026-10-14 | trivial | Present workflow notes See All Slides and zoom |
| 2026-10-13 | trivial | Canvas animation preview landed; beta item 9 keeps the timeline and preview from the selected effect |
| 2026-10-13 | minor | M10: Grid Options dialog; New Window stays open |
| 2026-10-13 | minor | M9: WordArt adjust handles drag; the Transform gallery and command stay open |
| 2026-10-14 | trivial | After beta: pen pressure scales ink width; tilt and pinch zoom remain |
| 2026-10-10 | minor | Added the alpha gate (six core workflows): all pass, two with partial depth; stage stays alpha |
| 2026-10-10 | major | Created: current focus, ranked beta plan with hours, milestones M0–M14 with status, the old alpha checklist as history |
PDF writer consolidation preserves the current raster-artwork export and its selectable text layer, notes and handouts. It does not advance vector-PDF or printing parity.