Dev Slides

Overview

Create developer-friendly presentations using Slidev, a markdown-based slide framework powered by Vue. Supports live code execution, syntax highlighting, Mermaid diagrams, LaTeX math, and speaker notes. Ideal for tech talks, team demos, and conference presentations.

Instructions

When a user asks you to create a presentation or slide deck, follow this process:

Step 1: Set up the Slidev project

Slidev needs Node.js 22.12 or newer. The npm package is @slidev/cli (there is no package called slidev), so install it into a project instead of relying on a bare npx slidev:

# Scaffold a project with prompts (creates slides.md, package.json, scripts)
npm init slidev@latest

# Or add it to an existing folder
mkdir api-design-talk && cd api-design-talk
npm init -y
npm i -D @slidev/cli @slidev/theme-seriph

Inside the project, npx slidev and the dev / build / export scripts all work.

Step 2: Gather the presentation requirements

Before writing slides, determine:

• Topic: What is the presentation about?
• Audience: Developers, managers, mixed?
• Length: How many slides? (Typical: 10-20 for a talk)
• Style: Technical deep-dive, overview, tutorial, demo?
• Code focus: Which languages and frameworks?

Step 3: Write the slides in Markdown

Slidev uses Markdown with YAML frontmatter and --- separators between slides.

Basic structure:

---
theme: default
title: "Your Presentation Title"
info: |
  Presentation description
class: text-center
drawings:
  persist: false
transition: slide-left
---

# Your Presentation Title

Subtitle or tagline

---

## Slide Title

- Bullet point one
- Bullet point two
- Bullet point three

---

Code blocks with syntax highlighting:

---

## API Example

\`\`\`typescript {2-3|4-5}{lines:true}
async function fetchUsers() {
  const response = await fetch('/api/users');
  if (!response.ok) throw new Error(`HTTP ${response.status}`);
  const data = await response.json();
  return data;
}
\`\`\`

---

The {2-3|4-5} part highlights lines step by step on each click (use all or none as stages too); the second brace group {lines:true} turns on line numbers for this block.

Mermaid diagrams:

---

## Architecture

\`\`\`mermaid
graph LR
  A[Client] --> B[API Gateway]
  B --> C[Auth Service]
  B --> D[Data Service]
  D --> E[(Database)]
\`\`\`

---

Two-column layouts need layout: two-cols in the slide's frontmatter; ::right:: starts the right column (use two-cols-header for a full-width heading row):

---
layout: two-cols
---

## Comparison

### Before
- Manual deploys
- No tests
- 2-hour releases

::right::

### After
- CI/CD pipeline
- 95% coverage
- 5-minute releases

---

Speaker notes:

---

## Key Metrics

- 99.9% uptime
- 50ms p99 latency

<!--
Speaker notes go here.
Mention that we achieved this after the migration in Q3.
-->

---

Step 4: Add theme and configuration

The first slide's frontmatter (headmatter) configures the whole deck. Themes are npm packages (@slidev/theme-seriph, @slidev/theme-default, community themes such as slidev-theme-*); Slidev offers to install a missing one on first run.

---
theme: seriph
title: REST API Design
author: Dana Whitfield
class: text-center
lineNumbers: true        # line numbers in every code block
transition: slide-left
drawings:
  persist: false
exportFilename: rest-api-design
---

Syntax highlighting (Shiki) and UnoCSS are built in, so the old highlighter: shiki and css: unocss keys are not needed.

Step 5: Preview and export

# Dev server with live reload (default port 3030)
npx slidev slides.md --open

# Build as a static SPA into dist/ (add --download to offer a PDF)
npx slidev build slides.md

PDF, PPTX and PNG export use Playwright, which is not bundled. Install it once, then export:

npm i -D playwright-chromium
npx slidev export slides.md --output rest-api-design                    # PDF
npx slidev export slides.md --format png --output rest-api-design-png   # one PNG per slide
npx slidev export slides.md --format pptx-editable                      # PowerPoint with native shapes

Add --with-clicks to get one page per click step and --range 1,4-6 to export only some slides. Without Playwright the export command fails with an error from importPlaywright. The built-in browser exporter (the Export entry in the dev server's menu, or /export) works in Chromium without the CLI.

Examples

Example 1: Create a tech talk on API design

User request: "Create slides for a talk on REST API best practices"

Output: Write slides.md with approximately 12-15 slides covering:

1. Title slide with talk info
2. Agenda / outline
3. What makes a good API (principles)
4. Resource naming conventions with examples
5. HTTP methods and status codes (code table)
6. Request/response design with code blocks
7. Pagination patterns with code
8. Error handling with JSON examples
9. Versioning strategies
10. Authentication overview (diagram)
11. Rate limiting
12. Documentation tools
13. Summary and key takeaways

Each slide uses appropriate Slidev features: code blocks for examples, Mermaid for architecture diagrams, two-column layouts for comparisons.

Example 2: Create an internal team demo

User request: "Make slides for demoing our new auth system to the team"

Output: Write slides.md with 8-10 slides:

1. Title: "New Auth System Demo"
2. Problem statement (what was wrong with the old system)
3. Architecture diagram (Mermaid flowchart)
4. Code walkthrough: login flow with highlighted steps
5. Code walkthrough: token refresh mechanism
6. Before/after metrics comparison (two-column layout)
7. Migration plan timeline
8. Q&A slide

Example 3: Generate slides from an outline

User request: "Turn this outline into slides: Intro to Docker - what it is, images vs containers, Dockerfile basics, docker-compose, best practices"

Output: Convert each outline item into 2-3 slides with:

• Explanatory text and bullet points
• Relevant code blocks (Dockerfile syntax, docker-compose.yml)
• A Mermaid diagram showing the image-to-container lifecycle
• A best practices checklist slide

Guidelines

• Keep each slide focused on one idea. If a slide has more than 5 bullet points, split it.
• Use code blocks liberally for developer audiences. Highlight key lines with the {lines} syntax.
• Add Mermaid diagrams for architecture, flows, and relationships instead of describing them in text.
• Use speaker notes for context you want to say but not display.
• Prefer the seriph or default theme for professional presentations.
• For live demos, use Slidev's Monaco editor: mark a block ```ts {monaco} to make it editable, or {monaco-run} to run it in the browser.
• Always structure slides with a clear narrative: problem, solution, details, summary.
• Export to PDF before sharing to ensure consistent rendering; interactive features (Monaco, click animations) are not preserved in PDF/PPTX, so host the slidev build output when they matter. Plain pptx exports slides as images; use pptx-editable if the recipient must edit text.
• Keep total slide count reasonable: 1-2 minutes per slide is typical pacing.