How Does Claude Refresh a Deck?
This short video explains that refreshing a deck with Claude is a fixed find-and-replace of one figure, not a rewrite of the story. The deck-refresh skill swaps every instance of a number and leaves everything else untouched.
Ask Claude to refresh a deck with the new numbers and it is tempting to picture it reconsidering the whole slide: updating the commentary, the trend language, maybe the framing along with the figure. This video from Humanitarians AI, narrated by Liam, explains that this is not what happens. Anthropic's deck-refresh skill reads a written SKILL.md and executes a linear pipeline that swaps numbers.
Reconsidering the story or find and replace
The natural guess is that Claude reconsiders the slide's story. The video says the skill does not reconsider anything. It is a fixed swap: find every place one figure appears and replace it with another. Ask it to also rewrite the sentence built around that number and it will not, because that is outside the step.
According to the video, the skill is meant for updates such as quarterly refreshes, earnings updates, comp rolls and rebased market data, and it works by finding and replacing figures across an existing deck.
One figure, three slides
The skill reads the deck slide by slide, in order, and swaps one exact figure for another wherever it finds it. The video's anchor example is $485M, which appears in three places:
- The executive summary.
- The comps table.
- A footnote.
On three separate slides, one by one, each becomes $512M. The refresh is done, and $512M now sits in all three places where $485M used to.
Changed numbers are not the same as a true deck
The video adds two cautions. A deck where every figure changed is not the same as a deck that is still true. A sentence that said "still below $485M" does not get rewritten just because the number did. And a leftover $485M is not always a miss, because sometimes that instance was never the target figure at all.
The video's summary is that a deck refresh is not Claude rewriting the story. It is one figure swapped everywhere the step says to swap it and left alone everywhere else.
Key takeaways
- Refreshing a deck with the deck-refresh skill is a fixed find-and-replace, not a reconsideration of the slide.
- The skill reads the deck slide by slide and swaps one exact figure for another wherever it appears.
- It does not rewrite commentary, trend language or framing, even when asked to rewrite the sentence around the number.
- In the example, $485M in the executive summary, comps table and footnote becomes $512M in all three.
- A sentence built on the old number, such as one saying a value is still below $485M, is not rewritten when the number changes.
- A leftover instance of the old figure may be a different number that was never the target.
- Changing every figure does not guarantee the deck still tells a true story.
Try it yourself
Give Claude a few sentences that repeat one figure in different contexts, for example a revenue figure of $485M up from $420M last quarter and a book value near $485M. Ask it to replace every instance of $485M with $512M and change nothing else. Then check whether a nearby sentence built on the old number is still literally true, or whether the figure moved while the sentence around it stayed exactly where it was.
Chapters
Full transcript(auto-generated, with timestamps)
Refresh the deck — does Claude rewrite the story?
[0:00]Someone asks whether refreshing a deck means Claude rewrites the story. It doesn't, it swaps the numbers. Liam is here to walk through exactly what the skill changes and what it leaves alone. The natural guess is that refreshing a
Reconsider the story, or find & replace?
[0:12]Deck means Claude reconsiders the numbers, updating the commentary, the trend language, maybe the whole slides framing along with the figure. But the skill doesn't reconsider anything. It's a fixed swap. Find every place one figure appears and replace it with another. Ask it to also rewrite the sentence built around that number and it won't. That's outside the step. What the
One figure, three slides
[0:30]Skill actually does is read the deck slide by slide in order and swap one exact figure for another wherever it finds it. Watch the anchor. 485 million appears in the executive summary, again in the comps table, and again in a footnote. Three separate slides. One by one, each becomes 512 million. The refresh is done. 512 million now sits in
Number changed, is the story still true?
[0:50]All three places where 485 million used to. But a deck where every figure changed isn't the same as a deck that's still true. A sentence that said still below 485 million doesn't get rewritten just because the number did. And a leftover 485 million isn't always a miss. Sometimes that instance was never the target figure at all. A deck refresh
Carry-out
[1:09]Isn't Claude rewriting the story. It's one figure swapped everywhere the step says to swap it and left alone everywhere else. Your turn. Here's the
Your turn
[1:18]Prompt. Read it with me. Give Claude a few sentences that repeat one figure in different contexts and ask it to swap that one figure for another and change nothing else. Then check whether a nearby sentence built on the old number is still true or whether the figure moved while the sentence around it stayed exactly where it was. Liam in for Bear. How does Claude refresh a deck?
Outro
[1:36]Liam in for Bear.
