Decks

Decks is an open-source, locally run slide-making harness by Paul Millerd (paulmil11). You leave comments under slides, and a coding agent such as Claude Code or Codex changes the deck and replies on the slide with what it did, a question, or why it left something alone. The latest release listed is v0.8.0.

What It Is

Decks is a local web app and command-line tool (sb) for building presentations iteratively with a coding agent instead of PowerPoint or Google Slides. Each deck is a single HTML file in its own folder with its own git history. It opens in any browser, presents full screen, and prints to PDF. The server runs on your machine, and your agent sends what it reads to its model provider as it would with any file.

How a Round Works

You write a comment under a slide, or edit slide text directly, then hand the round to the agent with the Ask Claude prompt or by saying "process changes". The agent reads comments and edits through sb, changes the deck file, and replies on each slide. It then screenshots touched slides, runs an audit, exports a numbered PDF, records the round, and commits the deck folder. You review replies and mark comments as looks good or reopen them. In Claude Code, a watch mode turns the button into Process now.

Checks and Consulting Method

A Checks tab offers tests the author teaches: 5-second and 10-second tests, horizontal flow, vertical flow, and Guides covering border, title length, minimum text size and text-size count. The agent follows rules such as answer first, ghost decks, action titles and one idea per slide.

Decks, Templates and Sharing

New decks start from templates (consulting, talk, workshop, proposal, blank) with selectable color sets. Existing PowerPoint or PDF files can be imported. Sharing produces a Client copy, a Review copy for outside commenters, or an Editable copy, and returned review files merge back with sb import.

Setup Path

Install requires Python 3.9+, Node.js 18+, and optionally git, on macOS and Linux. Running ./setup.sh and python3 server.py serves the dashboard at localhost:8790. The author recommends the Claude and Codex apps with Opus 5.5 or Sol 6.1.