Lattuce tutorial · Writer
Lecture slides in Writer
Import lecture slides into Writer, preserve slide structure, and connect a talk deck to research and study workflows.
Writer’s Present stage ingests PDF lecture decks so you can capture lecture notes, seed a research topic, and draft a paper outline from slide titles.
Upload a deck
- Open a paper → Sources, or use Upload slides on the dashboard Slide decks hub.
- Prefer the Upload lecture slides preset (tags the source as
slides/lecture). - Wait until extract status is ready.
Upload PDF only. Export your Keynote, PowerPoint, or Google Slides deck to PDF first.
Authoring conventions (for clean ingest)
Writer chunks one PDF page = one slide. Title inference and outline seeding work best when:
| Do | Avoid |
|---|---|
| One slide per page | Multi-slide pages or booklet layouts |
| A clear page title (large heading at the top) | The same banner/title repeated on every page |
| Sparse text — title + short bullets | Dense paragraphs (>~1800 characters per page) |
| Distinct titles across the deck | Screenshot dumps or scanned board photos |
After ingest, Journey handoffs can seed a research topic or draft a write outline from slide titles (templates like Talk then paper / Course exam).
Verify the slide handoff
After the source is ready, open the slide preview and compare a few representative pages with the original deck. Check the first title, an agenda or section divider, a dense content slide, and the final appendix page. If titles are not inferred correctly, fix the source deck or use the outline controls rather than treating the generated outline as authoritative.
For a talk-to-paper workflow, keep three artifacts separate: the original deck, the extracted slide source, and the paper outline. This makes it clear which claims came from the talk and which were later supported by research sources.
Talk decks authored in Lattuce
You can also seed a talk deck from your paper, use Talk assistant to design or edit slides (review before Present / Export), edit kinds manually (title, bullets, code, experiment, diagram, figure), present fullscreen in the browser, and export a Lattuce-branded academic PDF. That PDF is registered as a lecture slide source so lecture notes and existing Present tooling still apply.
When AI slide design is unavailable, Seed from paper still works as a deterministic fallback (headings, compose points, code/mermaid fences, up to two figures).
Use product Help search for “talk deck” or open the paper dashboard Slide decks hub.
Study courses (appendix and diagram slides)
When a slide deck is attached to a Study course (upload via Upload slide deck):
- Ingest may set
study_scope— core slides only (e.g. pages 1–30), with appendix/Literature tails excluded from ask and exam prep. - Diagram-heavy slides can receive vision captions at ingest when a vision LLM is configured; captions feed grounded chat.
- Materials shows a banner when scope is detected or when re-ingest is needed for older decks.
- Override Last core PDF page / Appendix starts on in source Details metadata, or use Guided roadmap → Split deck into sections for chapter-sized modules.
Materials row actions (course study)
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| View | Opens the slide deck preview beside study chat (stays in the course workspace). |
| Note beside deck | Opens or creates a lecture note editor beside the same slide preview — no navigation to Notes vault. |
| Notes vault | Opens the lecture note in Notes with the deck in the source preview pane (full vault editor). |
| Rename / tags / Library / Remove | Manage the source from the row overflow menu (⋯). |
Rows with a saved lecture note show a violet Note badge next to the slide status chips.
Drag to reorder slide decks and readings in Materials (⋮⋮ handle). Order is saved to the course collection and drives Prepare course module sequencing (agenda → section → deck cascade per deck).
When decks include an agenda slide, Prepare course (Tools) can promote suitable agenda lines into syllabus modules; housekeeping lines stay reference-only and are not turned into concepts or exam questions. After extract, Materials shows an outline quality chip (Agenda, Section, Deck, or Heuristic) so you know how modules were inferred before you accept them.
Troubleshooting
- No text appears: confirm the PDF is not only scanned images; OCR or a text-bearing export is needed for reliable extraction.
- The outline is noisy: remove repeated banners, add a single title per page, and re-import with the lecture preset.
- Appendix material enters the course: set the last core page or appendix start in source Details, then re-run the course preparation step.
- A talk deck should become a paper: use the slide source for structure, then attach citable references before running grounded Compose.
Continue with the Writer paper lifecycle, notebook research, or literature review.
Browse more in Writer or return to all tutorials.