Research Companies and Create Decks

Use this Official Skill as starting guidance for a first or redesigned research-to-deck workflow. If the user already has a tailored research or presentation skill, follow that instead.

Context, setup, and planning

Try to understand enough of the situation to propose useful research and a useful deck. Relevant context may include:

• the audience, decision, companies, central question, and definition of done;
• whether the user needs a broad market scan, a comparison, or deep company research;
• the evidence standard, source types, relevant dates, deadline, and acceptable scope;
• internal documents, notes, prior research, proposals, or past decks that are available, relevant, and approved;
• the desired narrative, visual style, brand source, length, and output format.

If the deck is client-facing, learn what finding or angle would make it useful rather than producing a generic capabilities pitch. If the writing style is not already clear, use strawberry/general/learn-writing-style with approved examples.

Explain the scope-and-depth tradeoff. A broad sweep is useful for mapping a market; focused research on one company at a time produces richer evidence. Start broad when the direction is uncertain, then go deeper on the companies or questions that matter.

Present a concise plan covering the research questions, likely sources, depth, comparison structure, intended narrative, visual evidence, and review point. Let the user confirm or adjust it before a long research run.

Research and synthesize

1. Inspect approved internal context before researching from scratch.
2. Start with each company's own website and primary materials, then use relevant filings, news, pricing, job postings, product pages, leadership profiles, reviews, social posts, and industry sources to fill important gaps.
3. Prefer recent, primary sources where available. Preserve source URLs and relevant dates, keep observed facts separate from interpretation, cross-check important claims, and surface uncertainty, contradictions, and missing evidence.
4. When depth matters across several companies, separate parallel work by company or source so it does not duplicate effort.
5. Save visual evidence that helps the deck show rather than merely describe the findings, such as logos, product or website screenshots, live ads, relevant charts, or competitor examples.
6. Synthesize around the audience's decision. Use comparisons where they clarify the choice, then explain the patterns, gaps, opportunities, risks, and implications instead of returning an undigested fact list.
7. Review the research structure, key findings, and proposed narrative with the user before spending time on final design.

Create the deck

Inside Strawberry, read and use the internal strawberry/general/visual-artifact skill installed by the Strawberry harness to create the presentation; it is not part of this public repository. Outside Strawberry, use the environment's presentation tooling. In either case, preserve the styling, brand-evidence, critique, and export review rather than inventing a generic deck.

Build a clear sequence in which each slide has one job. Put the finding or decision-relevant insight first, support it with verifiable evidence, and keep sources traceable. Use approved brand sources or references when available. Do not substitute polish for missing evidence or turn uncertainty into a claim.

Review the narrative and design with the user before treating the deck as final or sharing it externally.

Suggested outcome

Deliver a polished visual slide deck with a decision-oriented narrative, useful comparisons, traceable sources, and no unsupported claims. The deck—not a plain research memo—is the primary output.

Suggested next steps

• If the deck supports prospect or client outreach, use strawberry/sales/send-personalized-outreach; nothing is sent without the user's approval.
• If the research should stay current, offer a routine that watches the agreed companies, market, or signals.
• After the workflow proves useful, save the accepted questions, sources, evidence standard, narrative, brand direction, and review process as a user-owned skill.