DotMD Slides
Markdown in. A beautiful deck out.
A guided tour of the toolset · 2026
One format, every surface
Default layout, and no directive at all — this slide inherits the deck-wide background set once in the frontmatter.
- A thematic break starts the next slide
- The same bold, italic and
inline codeyou already know - Present, export or share — no proprietary file in sight
Layouts
Five built-in, one per job: title, section, two-column, quote — and the plain default slide you just saw.
Built for momentum
Two-column layout flows the whole slide body across two columns — different from :::columns, which splits one block.
- Markdown-native — portable, diff-able, yours
- Real-time collab — present and edit together
- BYOK AI — draft and polish with your own key
- Agent-ready — MCP access for your tools
- Themed — light, dark, midnight and paper
- Export anywhere — Markdown, PDF, HTML
Notes only you can see
Speaker notes stay with the active slide while you edit. The notes dock follows the card you are viewing, and compact screens open the same editor from the slide's Notes action.
- Presenter-only notes never appear on the audience stage
- Presenter view keeps the current notes beside the next slide
- Export and re-import keep every note attached to its slide
Say the important part loudly
Callouts are styled for the stage — accent bar, tint and glyph, all five kinds:
Tip
The same > [!TIP] you write in a document.
Warning
Note, Tip, Warning, Important and Caution.
Columns, inline
Native :::columns splits a single slide without a line of CSS:
For presenters
Outline, draft and rehearse from one plain-text source.
For the audience
A clean, focused stage — no clutter, no chrome.
Numbers that render
Tables — Markdown pipes become a styled grid:
| Metric | This quarter | A year ago |
|---|---|---|
| Decks created | 18,400 | 1,200 |
| Teams onboard | 940 | 70 |
| Median build time | 6 min | 45 min |
Code, verbatim
Fenced blocks keep every character — ideal for a live walk-through:
# Create a deck straight from your terminal via MCP
dotmd slides create ./launch.md --workspace northstar
Code on a stage is monochrome: the highlighter is an editor decoration, so what the room sees is clean, plain type.
Diagrams, drawn from a fence
A mermaid fence renders as live SVG on the stage — the same three backticks you would write in a document, and no picture to keep in sync:
flowchart LR
A[Write Markdown] --> B{DotMD}
B --> C[Present]
B --> D[Export]Lists for every shape
Ordered steps and a checklist, side by side on one slide:
- Start from this sample
- Swap in your own story
- Hit Present
- Pick a theme
- Choose a layout per slide
- Write your speaker notes
Backgrounds
A solid colour, a gradient or an image — one directive each, and a legibility scrim keeps the text readable over all three.
The other fit
"fit":"contain" shows the whole picture instead of filling the stage with it — right when the image is a diagram or a screenshot rather than a mood.
fittakescoverorcontainpositionfine-tunes the framingoverlayis your own scrim, and always beats the default
Gradients, named or written out
This slide rides a full CSS gradient, written inline. The five named presets each carry a slide of their own in this deck, so you can see every one rather than take our word for it:
grape— the title slideslate— the deck-wide defaultocean·mint·sunset— momentum, speaker notes, callouts
"We build every deck in DotMD now — the source lives right next to our code, and the AI drafts the first pass."
— A happy team lead
Edit without breaking the flow
The slides toolbar owns presentation settings, so slide content stays focused on the story:
- Switch layouts without rewriting content
- Change backgrounds from one shared picker
- Keep private notes in the notes dock
One theme, everywhere
Set theme: once in the frontmatter. Light, dark, midnight and paper stay aligned across the editor, slide rail, Present view and export.
Leave theme: out altogether and the deck follows each viewer's app appearance — light app, light deck.
Present like a pro
The directives end here. Everything below is built into Present and the slides toolbar:
- Full-screen Present — arrows, taps and swipes
- Speaker-notes panel — presenter-only, never the audience
- Present to viewers — broadcast your slide to the room, live
- Follow the presenter — wander off, re-follow in one tap
- Live audience count — see who is watching, on stage
- Deep links —
#s3or?slide=3opens on slide 3 - Timer and
?cheat-sheet — a clock and every shortcut - Theme, layout and background pickers — with a colour picker
Ship your first deck
You have just seen every layout, a deck-wide background and eleven per-slide ones, all five gradient presets, callouts on the stage, tables, code, columns, lists and private speaker notes. All of it from one Markdown file.
Made with DotMD. Three steps from here:
- Edit the words
- Keep the shape
- Press Present
