v4.0.0

Project positioning — now explicit

• New canonical charter: Project Positioning and Capability Boundary (English canonical, synchronized Chinese). The one-line thesis: PPT Master is an open-source, chat-driven workflow that lets AI reason the argument into shape first, then design and produce a real, editable PowerPoint — not slide images or a thin editable skin. Its defining axis is native depth: author or preserve more of PowerPoint's own object model, behavior, and reusable structure, release after release.
• Editable is table stakes; the direction of travel is converging with PowerPoint itself — the PowerPoint ↔ SVG Mapping Guide records the current boundary honestly, feature by feature
• README and the doc set are aligned to this framing throughout, with doc indexes added

Native slide masters & layouts

• Repeated page chrome and shared backgrounds are promoted to real slide masters (p:sldMaster / p:sldLayout inheritance); explicit per-deck layout contracts are compiled on export
• Exported decks inherit project theme colors and fonts; literal page numbers become live slide-number fields
• Solid/gradient full-page backgrounds export as PowerPoint-native slide backgrounds (#226, @Kaimar666)
• Structured template routes write locked master text styles and enforce master/layout structure

Token efficiency

• Reusable chart SVG template library compacted end to end, with rendering fidelity preserved
• Per-page execution context reuses unchanged references instead of re-projecting them; the execution lock contract is compacted
• New prompt budget and governance lint (prompt-audit); export postflight receipts are token-safe

Template system — Brand / Layout / Deck

• New Create Template route turns a finished PPTX, images/PDFs, documents/websites, or brand assets into a reusable template workspace — three classes: Brand (identity), Layout (structure), Deck (application + identity + structure)
• Deterministic mirror import: validated authoring IR materializes into a structured template workspace; review decks via template_preview_pptx.py
• New Fill Native PPTX route: a raw PPTX template plus new material patches slide shells directly — no SVG regeneration
• Adaptive vs. strict template use is now an explicit confirmed decision

PPTX import depth

• SmartArt semantic structure is read during intake; all DrawingML preset geometries round-trip
• Native table/chart reconstruction: XY chart axis semantics, imported table/chart fidelity improvements
• Robustness: unordered gradient stops, oversized tile image fills, and malformed source constructs recover locally

Converter

• CSS color alpha and group opacity compile into native alpha; picture opacity preserved through round-trip
• All native line-end arrow shapes enabled; animation and transition behavior unified across export routes; narration exports get a _narrated filename suffix

Planning & Confirm UI

• Confirm UI presents AI-authored custom design candidates alongside catalog options; staged confirmation covers reading mode and communication outcomes
• Mode + visual-style dual catalogs (18 styles) with per-style composition geometry vocabulary
• Versioned spec scaffolds; confirmed decisions are preserved end-to-end through spec projection; mandatory first-page checker gate

Image generation

• --reference-image single-image edit mode on the OpenAI backend (#233, @WodenJay) — out-of-pipeline restyle/iterate tool

Community

• URL-encode page_name for non-ASCII slide names in live preview (#224, @championeer)