Features
Everything that ships today
Everything on this page is in the current release.
Write a deck as text
Type the argument. Don't paint the slides.
- No boxes to draw, drag, align or resize: you write one line per idea and the design system sets the slide.
- Change a slide's layout by editing its layout line and marking its columns; the compiler re-fits it.
- Plain Markdown: diffable, portable, readable by any editor or AI. The app picks up outside edits live.
- An editor built for writing: context-aware autocomplete, auto-aligned tables, paste an Excel range as a finished table, comments.
- Everything by keyboard:
Ctrl+Kcommand palette, and every control is reachable by typing. - Mistyped fields are refused where they are written, naming the nearest valid field. Every error points to its line.
- Greek handled natively: uppercase set correctly, no stray accents.
More than 60 exhibits
Consulting, banking and teaching exhibits, measured to fit.
- Charts: column, bar, line, area, stacked, waterfall (both ways), slopegraph, dumbbell, Mekko, tornado, heatmap, spider, funnel, pyramid, distribution, boxplot, scatter with trend line. CAGR and difference arrows computed from the data.
- Frameworks and diagrams: 2×2 and 3×3 matrices, market maps, hub, Venn, causal loop, flow, decision and issue trees, org chart, strategy house.
- Planning: timeline, Gantt, swimlane, stage-gate, coverage scorecard, checklist.
- People and media: team grid, one-person CV, credentials, logo walls, image, gallery, video, maps.
- Tables: accent headers, bands, totals, merges, Harvey balls, units in the header.
- Packs: banking (trading comps, precedent transactions, key terms, premiums paid, sources and uses, EV build, valuation methods) and frameworks (SWOT, BCG, five forces, 7S, PESTLE), pre-filled.
Layouts and slide furniture
The conventions of a consulting deck, built in.
- Cover with photo and company and client logos, dividers, column splits, thirds, an emphasis column, back cover.
- Action titles with a takeaway line, section kickers, running head, source line, numbered footnotes.
- An agenda built from your dividers; slide-to-slide links that print the page number.
- Speaker notes written inline, shown in presenter view.
Guaranteed fit
Nothing draws outside its box.
- Each slide solves its own density: spacing first, then margin, then one type step, then a warning. Never more than two type sizes.
- When content still doesn't fit, it is cut cleanly at a word or a row, never overprinted.
- One feedback panel with tabs for errors, warnings, suggestions, notes and craft advice.
- Craft Check: numerals in titles, units, sources and dates, reported as advice.
- Live preview in about 24 ms per slide; a 30-slide deck compiles in under 150 ms.
Styles and theming
Re-skin freely; the layout rules stay locked.
- Four house styles: Consulting, Banking, Learning and Keynote (dark or light).
- Colour schemes, font pairings and type sizes per role. Any colour you pick gets readable contrast automatically.
- Import your firm's template: colours, fonts and the logo you point at come across from a .potx, .pptx or .thmx. Each colour is checked for legibility and a close passing shade offered. Layouts stay the compiler's.
- Measure an installed font: a brand typeface on your machine is measured so every slide fits it exactly.
- Customize Theme saves your company's fonts and colours to the Library for every deck.
Numbers you can trust
One figure, one value, everywhere.
- Named values: define a number once with
{{name}}and print it anywhere. - Figures ledger: checks that one number says the same thing on every slide.
- Linked data: tables and charts read CSV, TSV or Excel. Save the sheet and the slide redraws.
- Banking conventions: 8.1x, bps, pp, NM, negatives in brackets, short big numbers.
Present and share
Deliver the message straight from the app.
- A presentation window on the second screen that follows your edits live.
- Presenter view with this slide's and the next slide's notes.
- Send a PDF, per-slide PNGs, or one self-contained HTML file that opens in any browser.
- PowerPoint export when someone needs the file: text, tables, equations, callouts and charts stay editable, and charts carry their data.
- Finalise: the craft check and the figures ledger run, the DRAFT stamp comes off, and dated, versioned files land beside a saved version of the deck.
- Headless command line for scheduled reports:
decklay pdf,share,render,pptx,finalise,figures,craft.
AI-native
Optional. Markdown is the language of AI, so any AI can write a deck.
- Any AI or text editor can draft or rework a deck file; the app picks up the change live.
- Research and draft: pick the style and the kind of deck, answer its questions, approve the outline, watch the research.
- Start from your own material: pasted text, Markdown, Word or PDF.
- Shape the outline: every slide's title and its "so what" edited as one storyline before drafting.
- Chat that knows the slide you're on and proposes slide-sized edits you approve.
- The Committee: reviewers read the deck as a CEO, CFO, CHRO, CMO, COO or head of strategy, plus any office you add.
- Your firm's way of writing: the AI's instructions, storylines and reviewer personas are plain-text files you can edit.
- Guardrails on every call, switches for web search and for sending deck text, an opt-in AI log kept beside the deck.
- A Claude skill to write decks from any Claude session.
- The built-in co-author runs on your own Claude subscription or Anthropic API key.
Files, history and workflow
Decks are files, so history is too.
- Named milestones and snapshots as plain files; compare two versions slide by slide, even after reordering.
- New decks and AI drafts land in a folder you choose; a shared drive works.
- Onboarding tour, the manual as a 111-slide deck, a searchable F1 reference and a cheatsheet.
Privacy and trust
Local-first, by design.
- No cloud and no telemetry by default. Deck text leaves only for AI, and only to your own provider.
- Deterministic engine: the same input produces byte-identical output.
Run it through Decklay.
14-day full trial. Everything included, no card needed.