Ordering in the conversation
Ask for a deck and ANVL asks back before it builds: the questions that decide everything come first, then a card with the deck it has in mind, and nothing is built until you press the button.
"Make a pitch deck about why IKEA should partner with YouTube" is a thin order. There is no message in it, no audience and no proof, and a deck built straight from it would be generic. So ANVL does not build straight from it. The order is a conversation with three parts, and you can stop at any of them.
Who the material is for, and what it should achieve. If you have not said, ANVL asks before it proposes anything — as a question card, with two to four suggested answers you can click and a line for your own. At most three, and you can skip any of them.
A card headed something like Here is how I picture the pitch deck: the type and number of slides, the purpose, the audience, what you have said, the title if you gave one, how it will look, and the slides one by one. Under it, What I am missing — the things ANVL would otherwise have to guess, each with a field for your answer.
Build 7 slides builds it, with the answers you wrote in the card. I have more to say keeps talking. Nothing happens until you choose.
The question card
When something that decides the deck is missing, the card says Question from ANVL and asks one thing at a time — Who is this sales deck for? — with numbered answers drawn from what it knows about you, and Something else… for an answer of your own. The field under the card takes a free reply, and a question you do not want to answer can be skipped.
The suggestions are taken from your brand kit and the conversation, never invented: ANVL will offer existing customers you want to grow as an audience, but it will not offer a customer count it does not have.
What your brand kit already knows is never asked. Your answers go into the thread as a message of your own, so they are part of the conversation from then on.
The proposal
The proposal is a card, not a deck. It shows the deck ANVL has in mind so you can correct it before anything is built:
- The header
What it is and how long — Pitch deck · 7 slides.
- Purpose and audience
What the deck should achieve, and who it is for.
- What you have said
Only what is in the conversation. Nothing from your brand kit is put in your mouth here.
- Title
The title if you gave one, otherwise Not given. ANVL does not make one up out of your brand's messaging.
- Look
What the eye lands on first, the mood, and whether the material is light, dark or in your brand colour. The build follows it — the cover, the background and what each slide shows — and your brand's colours, fonts and rules still apply.
- The slides
One line per slide — what it is called and what goes on it. A slide that would need content you have not given is marked as such.
- Template
None — designed freely to the brand, unless you choose one of your brand's templates. A template is saved from a finished presentation, with Save as template under ⋯ in the editor's top bar.
- What I am missing
Concrete questions, not a shrug: is there a budget or a figure the deck should build on? Each has a field of its own — write the answer there. A point marked needed before I build has to be answered first. Build without answering the others and those slides come back as placeholders, not guesses — the card says so.
Under the card: Nothing is built until you say so. Next to the button, the card says what the build costs — The build costs 1 credit · 41 left.
Correcting the proposal
Write what is wrong, the way you would to a colleague — the audience is IKEA's head of digital, and the title should be "Kitchens meet creators" — and a new proposal appears with the correction worked in and a shorter list under What I am missing. The old card stays in the thread, greyed out and marked Replaced by a newer proposal, so you can see what changed.
An instruction about one part of the deck is not an order to build it. Saying slide 2 should be about the timeline gets you an updated proposal, not a deck; only the button builds.
After you press Build
Your answers go into the order — the card lists them under Your answers — and the build starts straight away, without a new message or a new proposal.
The deck is built and the editor opens with it. Back in the conversation, the deck stands as a card under the message it came from, with its status and an Open button, so the thread keeps a record of what it made.
If a built deck comes out sounding wrong in the same way every time, the cause is usually the brand kit rather than the conversation. Look at Tone in your brand kit, and ask the conversation what do you know about us to see the facts it builds from.
Still stuck? Write to hi@anvl.work and tell us what you were trying to do.