When an AI assistant builds a PowerPoint-style deck, token usage is rarely discussed, but it drives cost, latency, and how soon you hit context limits. These are reasoned estimates from a representative workflow, not audited benchmarks.
- Python / PptxGenJS agent path: roughly 60,000-90,000 tokens for the deck-building segment.
- OfficeMaker structured path: roughly 20,000-30,000 tokens total.
- Practical gap: the script-first approach can be two to four times more token-intensive, driven mainly by slide-image verification.
Where the Python / PptxGenJS tokens went
Costs stack across workflow documentation, generated JavaScript, dependency installs, conversion logs, image generation, and repeated visual QA. Nine exported slide images passed back into the model can dominate the budget before much real authoring happens.
Why OfficeMaker stayed leaner
OfficeMaker is designed around schema-first discovery and a structured create call. Layout and rendering happen server-side, so the assistant thread holds schemas, deltas, and structured document state rather than every intermediate script, file, screenshot, and terminal log.
Important caveats
These figures move with prompts, model choice, document size, and revision rounds. Exact counts should come from provider usage dashboards or API usage fields. The direction still matters: pushing pixels through the LLM for QA is expensive.