sad-slides

A CLI alternative to PowerPoint. Write your presentation in plain Markdown, present it full-screen in any terminal.

Installation

git clone https://github.com/Morkalork/ugly-point.git sad-slides
cd sad-slides
npm install

Usage

With npm

npm start presentation.md

With npx (no global install)

npx sad-slides presentation.md

Replace presentation.md with the path to your own file. See demo.md for a full-featured example, or mcp.md for a real presentation.

Navigation

| Key | Action | | ---------------- | --------------------------------- | | → or space | Next slide | | ← | Previous slide | | ↑ | Highlight the row above | | ↓ | Highlight the row below | | § | Clear the highlight | | q or ctrl-c | Quit (cursor is restored) |

Resize the window any time — the current slide re-renders instantly to fit.

Writing slides

Slides are plain Markdown separated by --- on its own line:

# First slide

Some content here.

---

## Second slide

More content.

Features

Block-letter titles

A slide that is only # H1 is rendered as large block-letter ASCII art using cfonts. If the title is too wide for the terminal a narrower font is tried automatically; if neither fits the slide falls back to a normal heading.

# Big Title

ASCII title with subtitle

Pair # H1 with ## H2 (and nothing else on the slide) to get the block-letter title plus a thin separator line and a centered subtitle in plain text beneath it.

# Big Title

## A descriptive subtitle

Full Markdown rendering

• Bold, italic, bold italic, ~~strikethrough~~
• inline code
• Links: [text](url)
• Headings at all six levels
• Blockquotes

Syntax-highlighted code blocks

Fenced code blocks are highlighted via cli-highlight. Specify the language for best results:

```typescript
function greet(name: string): string {
  return `hello, ${name}`;
}
```

Supported languages include TypeScript, JavaScript, Python, Bash, JSON, and many more.

Lists

Ordered and unordered lists with unlimited nesting. Bold, italic, and other inline formatting works inside list items.

* Top-level item
  * Nested item
    * Deeper still

Tables

Standard Markdown GFM tables are rendered with aligned columns.

Emoji shortcodes

Write :tada: and it renders as 🎉.

Row highlighting

Press ↑ / ↓ to cycle an inverse-video highlight through the visible rows of the current slide — useful for pointing at a specific line during a live talk. Press § to clear it.

Auto-resize

The presentation re-renders to fill the terminal whenever you resize the window. No restart needed.