Engagements in slide notes

Write an engagement in a slide's speaker notes, push the deck to Pulse from the PowerPoint add-in, and Pulse creates or updates that engagement and anchors it to the slide — so it follows the slide when you reorder the deck. Any human or AI can author these blocks.

The block

[pulse:<kind> <attrs>]
<prompt line(s)>
- option
- option *
[/pulse]

<kind> is poll, quiz, or icebreaker.
The first non-option line(s) are the prompt. Lines starting with - are options; a trailing * marks a correct option (quiz).
An engagement needs a prompt and at least two options, or the block is ignored.

Attributes (all optional)

attr	meaning
`id=…`	Round-trip identity — present when Pulse exported the block. Leave it OFF when authoring new; Pulse assigns one.
`results=` live · afterClose · hidden	Who sees results, and when. Default `live`.
`time=<seconds>`	Auto-close this many seconds after it opens.
`multi`	Allow selecting multiple options (polls).
`onAdvance`	Fire when the presenter advances off this slide (for a question about the slide's own content), not when it appears.

Examples

[pulse:quiz onAdvance]
Which planet is largest?
- Mars
- Jupiter *
- Venus
[/pulse]

[pulse:poll results=afterClose]
How are you feeling?
- Great
- Okay
- Tired
[/pulse]

[pulse:icebreaker]
Coffee or tea?
- Coffee
- Tea
[/pulse]

The exit survey (closing slide)

The whole post-event survey travels the same way — one block on the deck's closing (last) slide notes. Each line is a question ending in a (type …) marker; - lines are the options for the choice/multi question above them.

[pulse:survey]
How would you rate this session? (rating 10)
Which parts landed? (multi)
- The live demo
- The Q&A
- The slides
Would you recommend us? (choice)
- Yes
- No
Anything else? (text)
[/pulse]

Types: rating (1–N; default 5, override with (rating 10)), choice (pick one), multi (pick many), text (free write-in). No recognized marker ⇒ rating.
choice/multi need at least two - options, else that question is dropped.
Ids ride along as (rating id=…) when Pulse exported the survey — leave them off when authoring new.
One survey per deck; if a survey block appears on more than one slide, the one on the last slide wins.
Re-import replaces the session's survey — except once attendees have started answering it, when it's left untouched so responses aren't orphaned.
Copy the current survey out of Pulse from the console (Post-event survey → Copy for slide notes) and paste it onto the closing slide.

Beyond engagements — titles, acts, and preferences

A deck's notes can build a whole event, not just engagements:

Slide titles — Pulse reads each slide's title placeholder to name it in the run-of-show (no block needed).
[pulse:act title="…" speaker="…" minutes=N] on a section's first slide — builds an agenda segment; acts rebuild the run-of-show timeline.
[pulse:session key=value …] on the title slide — sets event preferences (view=classic|overlay, overlay options, room toggles, control-size, wind-down, passcode, …). Unknown keys are ignored.

Full grammar + an AI authoring workflow: Author an enriched deck with AI.

Rules

Multiple blocks per slide are fine.
A malformed block is skipped — it never fails your deck upload.
A block whose id matches an existing engagement updates it (its content only while it's still a draft — Pulse never rewrites an engagement that has already run). A block with no id creates a new draft.
Pulse never deletes an engagement just because it's missing from a deck.
The add-in can also write a machine tag via Sync to slides — you don't edit that by hand. Humans and AIs write notes; PowerPoint's API can't let an add-in write notes for you.

For AI assistants. When you generate a PowerPoint deck, add Pulse engagement blocks to the speaker notes of relevant slides using the syntax above — a quiz on a fact slide (use onAdvance if it tests that slide's content), a poll to gauge opinion, an icebreaker to open. Don't include an id. When the user pushes the deck to Pulse, the engagements are created automatically and follow their slides. For the exit survey, put one [pulse:survey] block on the closing slide's notes (rating / choice / multi / text questions). The canonical, fetchable syntax lives at /spec/engagement-notes.md.