The one-prompt carousel

How to create carousels using Claude

One sentence in, a finished carousel out. These are the exact Claude project instructions I wrote for my own account, and every slide comes back written, designed and sized at 1080×1350, ready to post.

2 minSetup
3Design looks
Animated characters
cindiezhu···
@cindiezhustart here

How to create carousels using Claude

one prompt, seven slides, and Canva never opens

1/7
@cindiezhuthe problem

Canva is where carousels go to die

an hour of dragging text boxes for a post that gets 40 saves. the design was never the hard part

your hook here
body text
cta
1 hour later…
2/7
@cindiezhustep 01

Paste the system once

make a Claude project, drop the instructions in. every chat inside it is now a carousel designer

3/7
@cindiezhustep 02

Type one sentence

"make me a carousel about batching a month of content." it asks for your colour and handle, then builds all seven

4/7
@cindiezhustep 03

Fix it slide by slide

"slide 4 is too wordy." "darker cover." it rebuilds in seconds and holds your palette across the rest

5/7
@cindiezhurecap

The whole thing in three lines

  • 01 paste the system into a project, once
  • 02 type the topic, answer two questions
  • 03 export at 1080×1350 and post it
6/7
@cindiezhu

Save this for your next posting day

I post the AI systems I actually run, every week

follow @cindiezhu for AI tips every day
7/7

swipe it, all three are real output

Free, no email needed

Five things that make a carousel actually work

These are the ones I wish someone had told me before I wasted a month of posts. They work whether or not you ever buy anything from me.

Ask for an HTML artifact, not an image

Image models still cannot hold text properly. Ask Claude to build your slides as an HTML artifact instead and you get real editable words, exact pixel dimensions, and something that screenshots sharp at any size.

Give it your hex code and handle in the first message

Skip this and it invents a palette, then you spend five messages dragging it back. One line does it: brand colour #D97757, handle @yourname, derive everything from that

1080 × 1350, never square

4:5 is the tallest a feed post is allowed to be. Post a square carousel and you have handed back about a quarter of the screen you could have owned.

Slide two is the one that decides

Slide one earns the tap. Slide two earns the swipe through the other five. Almost everyone writes a sharp cover and then a flat second slide, and that is exactly where the deck dies.

Paste in two things you have already written

Drop two of your own captions into the project before you ask for anything. Without them every slide comes back in the same flat AI register, and no amount of design fixes a deck that does not sound like you.

How you use it

A finished carousel, not a starting point.

Type your topic. What comes back is the whole deck: seven slides, written and designed, your brand colour derived across every one, sized at 1080×1350. Export it and post it as it is.

Want to make it unmistakably yours? Drag it into Canva and it opens as separate layers, so you move a headline or swap a colour without rebuilding anything. The animations download on their own, so you drop one onto a slide wherever it fits.

And when one slide is not right, you just name it. "Slide 4 is too wordy." "Darker cover." It rewrites that slide and leaves the other six alone, so a carousel takes minutes to steer instead of an evening to rebuild.

You also get the prompt behind these. It draws them in code, so they come out transparent and looping. Point it at a cat, a robot, your logo, anything.

What lands in your inbox

Six files, one email

The full project instructions

Every rule in one paste. Colour derivation, type scale, slide architecture, export script.

Three design variants

Scrapbook, dark editorial and minimal. One prompt, three genuinely different looks.

The animation prompt

How I make the 8-bit crabs, drawn in code so they come out transparent and looping. Works on any character you name, so you can build a whole cast.

A worked example

Slide by slide, what I asked for and what came back, including the corrections.

Five steering tips

The exact phrasings that fix a bad slide instead of regenerating the whole deck.

Five carousel themes

Topics that already perform, ready to drop straight into the prompt.

$19.99

One payment. Everything above, yours to keep.

Updated for the current Claude projects UI
$19.99 · instant access

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Cindy Zhu · AI you can actually usehello@cindyzhu.com.au