See how Talos turned a one-line brief into an 18-slide editable AI Agent research deck: a four-point timeline, a four-angle landscape, and sourced figures.
1. Task and Result
I needed a presentation introducing AI Agents, in three parts: how the field has evolved, the current competitive landscape, and where startups can break in. It was to be delivered standing up, with each slide carrying two minutes of talk.
I handed the topic and the requirements to Talos and got back an 18-slide editable PPTX in one pass, plus a PDF export of the same deck, with speaker notes on every slide.
Result:
- 18 finished slides, with 6 rendered pages saved in
images/ - Data from three tiers of sources: official documentation, industry reports, and private-market data
- Competitive landscape split into 4 angles; timeline built on 4 milestones
- 3 key figures: $8.7 billion raised in a single quarter, a projected $52.6 billion market by 2030, and 62.7% growth in vertical segments
What to show: the finished PPTX in the delivery folder, opened to the timeline slide
Check: 18 slides, the title of each slide, the four timeline milestones
2. Breaking Down the Task
Task 1: Reduce the topic to a single-sentence thesis
Background
The input was three requirements: lay out the evolution as a timeline, summarize the competitive landscape from several angles, and examine the opening for startups in terms of market gaps and long-term value. The material was scattered, with no ready-made structure.
Approach
What to show: the original instructions in the Talos chat interface
Check: the three parts and the three requirements- Fix the one-sentence thesis for the whole deck first: agents are past the concept stage and into competition at scale, and the upside lies in vertical scenarios and proprietary data.
- Allocate each slide's job against that sentence, one point per slide.
- Have the agenda slide break that positioning into the three parts, in order.
Selection criteria
| Criterion | What it decides | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| One point per slide | Does this slide carry a second point? | A slide you talk over should hold one idea |
| Serves the thesis | Does this piece of information support that sentence? | Material unrelated to the thesis stays out of the deck |
| Conclusion deferred | Should a framework slide state the conclusion up front? | Lay out the structure first; save the conclusion for the expansion slide |
What to show: the thesis sentence it produced, and the one-line job assigned to each slide
Check: the thesis sentence, the three parts of the agendaResult
The focus of the whole deck collapsed into one sentence, each of the 18 slides carries one point, and the agenda slide states the order of the three parts outright.
What to show: the agenda slide, and a body slide with a large headline
Check: the order of the three parts, the headline at the top of the slideTask 2: Source data from official channels and fit it into a framework
Background
Of the three parts, the competitive landscape had the messiest material: vendors, frameworks, funding, and market size all mixed together, and it needed outside data to hold up.
Approach
What to show: the original instructions in the Talos chat interface
Check: the requirement to source information from official and well-known channels- Split sources into three tiers: Google Cloud's Vertex AI release notes for official documentation, the MarketsandMarkets AI Agents report for industry data, and PitchBook funding data for the private market.
- Build the frame before filling in detail: the competitive landscape gets four angles — foundation model vendors, development frameworks and platforms, vertical and enterprise applications, capital and market — with one slide each.
- Choose the timeline milestones first: the early multi-agent prototypes of 1980, ReAct in October 2022, the open-source explosion in March 2023, and productization from 2025 to 2026.
Information integration criteria
| Criterion | What it decides | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| Source tiering | Which tier should this figure come from? | Official docs for capability, reports for scale, private-market data for funding |
| Frame first, detail second | Has the information found its slot? | The four angles neither overlap nor leave gaps |
| Traceable figures | Does every number have a source? | Sources go into the speaker notes |
What to show: the search through official documentation and industry reports, and the frame slide with the four angles
Check: the source domains, the four anglesResult
| Item | Count | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Source tiers | 3 | Official docs / industry reports / private market |
| Landscape angles | 4 | Models / frameworks / applications / capital |
| Timeline milestones | 4 | 1980 / 2022 / 2023 / 2025 |
| Key figures | 3 | $8.7B / $52.6B / 62.7% |
What to show: the slide with the four timeline milestones, the slide with four angles around a center, and the slide with the three figures
Check: the milestone years, the four angles, the three figuresTask 3: Producing and laying out the deck
Background
With the content and structure settled, what remained was arranging them into slides you can talk over, in one visual style from start to finish.
Approach
What to show: the original instructions in the Talos chat interface
Check: the requirements for style, type sizes, and editability- Pick one business-blue palette, with titles, body text, and footers aligned on three levels.
- Let the layout follow the content: a horizontal timeline, a center-and-four-sides frame, side-by-side comparison, and a dedicated slide for the three big figures.
- Add speaker notes to every slide, stating the source and definition of each figure.
Layout criteria
| Criterion | What it decides | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| Type hierarchy | Can titles, body text, and footers be told apart at a glance? | Hierarchy has to read clearly on a projector |
| Consistent throughout | Do fonts and colors jump from slide to slide? | Consistency comes from a single theme |
| Delivered editable | Is what you hand over a file that can be changed? | The output is a .pptx that lands in the folder |
What to show: slides in several layouts under the same style, side by side
Check: the timeline, frame, comparison, and data layoutsResult
The 18 slides use a dozen or so layouts, with one typeface throughout, Chinese text legible at 16:9, delivered as an editable PPTX plus a PDF.
What to show: the cover slide and one body slide
Check: the type hierarchy, the white space, the cover title
3. What Talos Does Differently
Compared with a chat-style model
Hand the same job to a chat window and what comes back is a block of loose text; you still have to split it into slides, choose layouts, and find images yourself. In this deck, each of the four kinds of work — research and sourcing, framing, drafting, and delivering the file — produced its own artifact: the sources became a list, the frame became slides, the content was laid out, and the result became a file you can open. Standards were set in one place and followed across the whole deck.
The whole chain in one pass
From a one-line topic to an 18-slide deck without switching tools. Research, framework assembly, slide generation, and PDF export all happen in the same chain.
What to show: the record of research, framing, and drafting within one session
Check: one session carrying the work from research through deliveryThe result is a file you can edit
What you get is an editable PPTX sitting in a folder. Text and layout can be changed directly, the same deck exports to PDF for sending out, and each slide's speaker notes travel with the file.
4. Summary
This AI Agent industry research deck started from a one-line topic. The focus was compressed into a single sentence, data was filled in from three tiers of sources, the information was fitted into a four-angle framework, and it was finally laid out as an 18-slide deck you can present, speaker notes included.
The workflow is not tied to a subject. Reports, competitor analyses, proposals, pitch decks — as long as the topic and requirements are clear, they can all run through the same chain: set the focus, add the data, build the frame, produce the deck.
To try one yourself, hand the topic and requirements to Talos. The entry point is taloswork.ai, through the ppt channel (slug to be confirmed).
---
Writing notes (delete this section before publishing)
- Every number comes from a real run; nothing is invented
- Real names, company names, and contact details are all anonymized
- No limitations, no risks, no failure branches
- All three kinds of screenshot are required: instruction, process, result — the result screenshot matters most
- At least 3 per task, 11 across the article
- No corner brackets for quotes, no negated parallel constructions, no summary clichés
- Delete every screenshot placeholder before publishing
- Run check-ai-phrases.py until it reports zero