Command guide

Type these commands in a terminal. Replace my-talk.md with your own slide filename; in a folder that has a slides.md you can leave it out. If a folder or filename contains spaces, put the path in quotation marks.

For how the commands, the views and the servers fit together, see Views, commands and servers.

Everyday commands#

The launch page#

mdeck run my-talk.md opens a page on your own computer with everything for this talk. It is what the preview's plain address, such as http://localhost:5173/, shows; the slides themselves are at ?view=deck.

• Preview: a small live copy of the deck to flip through; click it to open the audience window at that slide.
• Present: the presenter view, audience window and reader view, each in a new tab. The presenter view has notes, drawing controls, a timer and next-slide preview; Rehearse opens it timing each slide; switch to its slide-only layout for a single screen. The audience window shows slides without notes. Fullscreen is a control inside either view, not a separate view.
• Write and learn: the visual editor, the theme editor (themes and palettes on a sample deck, see Install, remove or share a theme) and these guides. Each starts the first time you click it.
• Share: buttons that make the dist folder, one file to send, or a PDF, next to your slide file, and show them in your file manager.
• Answers from the talk and Drawings: what was kept during the talk, to save or drop.
• Check: the same problems mdeck check reports, such as missing pictures.

For a deck with polls, the presenter view's connections panel (the connection icons in its bar) shows the server (built in, or the server setting and whether it answers), the join link and session code for phones, and for a server of your own whether it accepts the key that lets your browser move the phones along and reset polls (see below).

The key is the one the server was started with. Start mdeck run with the same key, for example MDECK_SERVER_KEY=choose-a-secret mdeck run my-talk.md, and the launch page's presenter and audience buttons open those views with it, so they move the phones along. Local views control this deck through the laptop; paired devices receive only a revocable token. Pairing codes never contain the master key. A hosted presenter can unlock the server separately with ?serverkey=…; that key is removed from the address as soon as the page has it. It never goes into the slide file, because that file reaches everyone who opens the slides.

Two options make the slides reachable from other devices:

See Draw on your slides for both. The launch page itself and its buttons only work on your own computer. --port 4000 chooses the port and --no-open starts without opening a browser.

Open a particular guide#

mdeck docs getting-started
mdeck docs sharing

Use the page name from its address, without .html. The welcome page is index.

mdeck docs --no-open starts the documentation server without opening a browser. mdeck docs --port 4200 chooses a port number. If the usual port is busy, mdeck tries another one.

To make a static copy of the documentation site, use mdeck docs --build. This saves it in docs/site/dist inside the mdeck project, separately from your presentation builds.

Edit in the browser#

mdeck edit my-talk.md
mdeck edit my-talk.md --no-open
mdeck edit my-talk.md --port 4300

The editor opens in your browser and writes every change into the slide file. --no-open starts it without opening a browser window; --port chooses the port. See Edit slides in your browser.

Design themes and palettes#

mdeck design my-talk.md
mdeck design                 # in a folder without a deck
mdeck design brand/

The design page shows themes and palettes on a sample deck with every kind of slide, light and dark, and lets you copy a built-in one and fine-tune its colours, fonts, sizes and spacing. With a slide file, it saves into the extensions folder beside it and can put the result in the deck. With a folder, or nothing, it saves into that folder's extensions, where any deck kept there finds them; no slide file is needed. --no-open and --port work as for mdeck edit.

Output options#

See Send, host or print your slides for help choosing between them. Unknown options, missing option values and extra filenames stop the command before it changes any output. --output=path and -o path are both accepted. mdeck preview --no-open --port 4200 previews without opening a browser and chooses a port.

Check more strictly#

mdeck check my-talk.md --strict

The ordinary check fails when it finds an error. The strict check also fails when it finds a warning, such as a layout name it does not recognize.

Check how the slides look#

mdeck check my-talk.md --render

This builds the deck and shows every slide in Chrome, with all steps revealed as in a PDF. It reports, by slide, heading and line:

• content that is taller than the slide's room for it;
• text that is cut off at the slide's edge;
• text that is hard to read on a plain background behind it;
• errors the page reports, such as a component that fails.

The check takes a few seconds and needs Chrome or Chromium; set MDECK_CHROME to its path if it is not found. It checks the deck in its own appearance. A slide with a problem it cannot measure, such as text on a photo, still needs a look in the preview.

Pictures of the slides#

mdeck snapshot my-talk.md
mdeck snapshot my-talk.md --slide 3,5-7 --dark
mdeck snapshot my-talk.md --sheet

This saves each slide, with all steps revealed, as a 1280×720 PNG file in .mdeck-snapshots/ beside the deck (-o for another folder), named my-talk-03.png and so on, and prints the paths. --slide picks slides by number; --dark and --light show that appearance instead of the deck's own. --no-drawings and --no-results leave out the drawings and the kept answers, as for build. --sheet saves one picture instead, my-talk-sheet.png: the slides in a grid, each under its number and heading, to see a whole deck at a glance. An AI assistant that reads pictures can use them to look at what it wrote. If you keep your slides in Git, add .mdeck-snapshots/ to your .gitignore.

Layouts, themes and palettes#

mdeck list layouts my-talk.md
mdeck starter split my-talk.md

The first lists the layouts available to your talk. The second prints starting text for one layout. mdeck list layouts --json prints the layout descriptions in a structured form intended for other tools.

mdeck list my-talk.md
mdeck list themes my-talk.md

The first lists every layout, theme and color palette your talk can use, including any kept in an extensions folder beside it. The second lists only themes; palettes works the same way. --json prints the same information for other tools. The complete registry has schema: 2 and layouts, themes, palettes and warnings fields. A filtered listing such as list layouts --json is a map keyed by layout ID. Extension TOML manifests still use schema = 1.

Slides from an AI assistant#

mdeck skill
mdeck skill --install claude codex
mdeck skill --print

Installs the slide-writing skill for the assistants you use, or prints it for any other tool. See Work with an AI assistant.