How to Make Slides with OpenAI Codex Skills (2026): Three Paths Compared

OpenAI Codex can generate real PowerPoint files through Agent Skills — folders of instructions and scripts that Codex discovers and runs. In 2026 there are three practical paths: the official Slides skill that ships with Codex (builds PPTX with PptxGenJS and checks its own rendering), open-source community skills like codex-ppt-skill (image-based slides), and hosted-generation skills like the 2Slides skill, which delegates rendering to an API and returns a themed, editable deck. Which one you want depends on whether you're optimizing for control, visual punch, or reliability at scale.

Making slides with a coding agent went from a party trick to a real workflow this year — several PPT skills now have tens of thousands of GitHub stars, and OpenAI publishes an official slide-deck use case for Codex. This guide walks through all three paths with exact setup steps, then compares the trade-offs honestly.

What is a Codex skill?

An Agent Skill is a folder containing a

file — instructions, scripts, and resources that an AI agent loads when a task matches. OpenAI describes skills as packages that agents "discover and use to perform at specific tasks." Codex ships system skills automatically, and additional skills install through the command by name or by GitHub URL. The same format is portable: many PPT skills run unchanged in Codex, Claude Code, OpenClaw, and Cursor. Skills differ from MCP servers in one fundamental way — a skill teaches the agent how to do the work locally, while an MCP server gives the agent a remote tool to call. (Full breakdown: Agent Skills vs MCP servers for presentations.)

Path 1: The official Codex Slides skill

OpenAI's own Slides skill creates and edits

decks by writing JavaScript against PptxGenJS, then renders the slides to images and checks for overflow, overlapping elements, and missing fonts before handing the file back.

Setup:

1. Update to the latest Codex — system skills ship automatically with the CLI.
2. Ask for a deck directly, following OpenAI's starter-prompt pattern:

Use the slides skill to turn NOTES.md into a 10-slide deck for a customer QBR.
Keep text as text (no text baked into images), use native PowerPoint charts
for the revenue table, and match the branding in template.pptx.

1. Codex plans the outline, writes PptxGenJS code, renders each slide, fixes layout bugs it finds, and saves the
   .pptx
   .

Strengths: fully local, free beyond Codex usage itself, output is native editable PPTX, and the render-then-check loop catches the classic "text overflowing the box" failure. Limits: design quality is bounded by what the model writes in code — it composes layouts like an engineer, not a designer, so decks trend toward clean-but-plain. Chart-heavy business decks fare better than visual storytelling.

Path 2: Open-source PPT skills (codex-ppt-skill and friends)

The community wave of 2026 is image-based skills. The most copied pattern — popularized by codex-ppt-skill — works in three stages: the agent plans an outline and a visual style, generates each slide as a full-bleed image with an image model, then assembles the images into a

with a local script. Some variants, like the nano-banana-based skills, lean on Google's image models for photorealistic or heavily art-directed slides.

Setup (Codex):

1. Install from the repo URL:
   $skill-installer https://github.com/ningzimu/codex-ppt-skill
   , then restart Codex.
2. Point it at source material: "Use the ppt skill to turn this market report into a 12-slide deck, dark editorial style."
3. Supply an image-model API key if the skill requires one (most do).

Strengths: the visual ceiling is far higher — full-bleed art direction that PptxGenJS code will never produce, and a template image can drive the entire style. Limits: slides are pictures. Text is baked in, so nobody can fix a typo in PowerPoint afterward; regeneration is the only edit path. Image-model costs add up per page, and quality varies run to run. For a deeper look at the ecosystem, see our comparison of eight PPT skills.

Path 3: The 2Slides skill — hosted generation from inside Codex

The third path keeps the agent workflow but moves rendering to a hosted service. The 2Slides skill is a

that teaches Codex (or Claude Code, OpenClaw, Cursor) to call the 2Slides API: Fast PPT mode fills professionally designed templates with your content and returns a native, editable PPTX; Nano Banana mode generates image-designed slides at 1K–4K when you want the visual route; narration and MP4 export are available on the same job.

Setup:

1. Get an API key at 2slides.com/api (new accounts include 500 free credits — about 50 Fast PPT pages).
2. Export the key and add the skill:

export SLIDES_2SLIDES_API_KEY="sk-..."
$skill-installer https://2slides.com/skill.md

1. Ask Codex for a deck: "Use the 2slides skill to generate a 10-page deck from README.md, pick a minimal dark theme, English."

Codex submits the job, polls status, and downloads the finished file. Because rendering happens server-side against maintained templates, the output doesn't depend on what layout code the model happened to write that day. If you prefer tool-calls over skills, the same service is exposed as an MCP server — setup in the Codex + 2Slides MCP guide.

Which path should you use?

Honest guidance: if you make one internal deck a month and live in Codex anyway, the official skill is enough. If you want slides that look art-directed and nobody needs to edit them, the image-based skills are genuinely impressive. If decks recur — weekly reports, client deliverables, anything a team ships — hosted generation is the only path where run #40 looks like run #1.

FAQ

Can Codex create PowerPoint files without any skill?

Yes, but unreliably. Without a skill, Codex will improvise — usually writing a python-pptx or PptxGenJS script from scratch each time, with no layout checking. Skills exist precisely to make the workflow repeatable: the instructions, libraries, and self-checks are pinned instead of reinvented per session.

Do Codex skills work in Claude Code too?

Mostly yes.

is a portable convention: codex-ppt-skill, the 2Slides skill, and most community PPT skills document Claude Code, OpenClaw, and Cursor support alongside Codex. The official OpenAI Slides skill is Codex-specific, and Anthropic ships its own pptx skill for Claude.

How much does it cost to generate slides with Codex skills?

The official skill costs nothing beyond your Codex plan. Image-based skills bill per generated image through your image-model key. The 2Slides skill uses credits: 10 per Fast PPT page or 100 per Nano Banana page, with 500 free credits on signup — pricing details in the API guide.

What's the difference between a Codex skill and the ChatGPT @Presentations skill?

ChatGPT's @Presentations skill lives in the ChatGPT app and targets everyday users; Codex skills live in a coding agent and can be scripted, chained with other tools, and run over your repo. Our review of the @Presentations skill covers where each fits.

Which path produces decks people can actually edit afterward?

The official Slides skill and 2Slides Fast PPT mode both output native PPTX with real text boxes. Image-based skills produce slides as pictures — beautiful, but any text change means regenerating the slide.