theme-factory is useful when content is mostly settled but its colors and typography are inconsistent. It offers ten preset themes and a path for creating a custom one. The workflow is to compare directions, choose a specification, and apply it to the real artifact. It does not replace missing arguments, data, or structural editing.
Install and invoke
Send these two commands in the Claude Code chat input, one at a time. They are plugin commands, not shell commands for your operating system. The second installs the official collection containing theme-factory.
/plugin marketplace add anthropics/skills
/plugin install example-skills@anthropic-agent-skills
In your project conversation, ask Claude to “use theme-factory” and supply the task or files. The prompt below is an editable starting example. Installing the collection supplies instructions and resources; it does not supply your source material or guarantee that every runtime dependency is installed locally. If the skill is missing, check that its plugin is installed, enabled, and loaded in the current session. Do that before troubleshooting the requested output.
Choose before modifying
Use theme-factory to choose a theme for quarterly-review.pptx.
This is a customer-facing review. Show the options and explain which suit clear data presentation.
Wait for my selection before applying it. Preserve charts, text, and slide order.
Preview two slides and explain the mapping for colors and heading/body fonts.
The bundled theme-showcase.pdf helps compare the available directions. After selection, the agent reads the corresponding theme file. The showcase is a reference and should not be modified into your deliverable. Theme names describe visual directions; their files provide the concrete values used in the output.
For example, Ocean Depths specifies navy #1a2332, teal #2d8b8b, seafoam #a8dadc, and light #f1faee, with DejaVu Sans typography. This establishes relationships between backgrounds, accents, and text rather than merely choosing one primary color. If you already want that theme, name it directly instead of repeating the selection process.
Judge the theme using real content
Preview one text-heavy page and one data page. Check heading hierarchy, body contrast, and whether chart series remain distinguishable. The weakest page is often a better test than an attractive cover. A consistent palette should not collapse meaningful distinctions in the data.
Once the sample works, apply it throughout and check changed line breaks, table heights, and text overflow. Theme selection does not complete layout work. Crowded content may still need restructuring or additional pages. For PPTX or DOCX output, a file-specific skill can handle editing while theme-factory supplies the shared visual rules.
When none of the presets fit, provide the audience, existing brand colors, desired tone, and exclusions. Ask for a custom palette and font pairing before applying it. Record actual color values, typefaces, and roles rather than only adjectives such as modern or polished. Keep that specification with the finished artifact so future documents can follow it. If a chosen font is unavailable, document the substitute and inspect the layout again.
Share rules across files, not identical pixels
For an event with both a slide deck and a report, choose one theme and define background, heading, body, and accent roles before editing each file. Do not copy a projector title size onto an A4 page. What should remain consistent is the visual role and color relationship, not every pixel measurement. Deliver a short theme specification so the next editor can apply the same decisions instead of guessing from a cover image.
A theme choice is not the finished design
One tester found that theme-factory can make colors and typography coherent, yet a poor base theme still looks generic. Try the candidate on the densest page, a real chart, and body copy; check hierarchy and contrast before applying it everywhere. If an older plugin fails with API 400 immediately on activation, inspect whether loading the showcase PDF is the cause; that is a setup failure before any artifact is generated.