The command line

slide-ng is the command of the package. Without a command it starts the dev server, so slide-ng, slide-ng talk.md and slide-ng --port 4300 all mean dev. A deck is a markdown file, slides.md unless you name another.

slide-ng create my-deck            # a new deck folder
slide-ng [dev] [slides.md]         # dev server
slide-ng build [slides.md]         # a static site in ./dist
slide-ng build --offline           # a folder you open from disk
slide-ng export [slides.md]        # PDF, PNG, PPTX or Markdown
slide-ng export-notes [slides.md]  # a PDF of the speaker notes
slide-ng format [slides.md]        # tidy the markdown file
slide-ng theme eject               # copy the theme in use into ./theme
slide-ng mcp [slides.md]           # MCP server on stdio
slide-ng skills install            # copy the agent skill into .agents/skills/slide-ng

In a checkout of the repository, run the same thing as node bin/slide-ng.mjs <command>. In a deck made by create, the scripts npm run dev, build, export and format call it for you.

Where a deck is built

A deck inside the slide.ng repository is built in place. Any other deck gets a working copy of the app in <deck>/.slide-ng/, made fresh each time, so the installed package is never written to. dev, build and export each have their own copy (app, app-build and app-export), so a build while the dev server runs leaves the dev server alone. The price is a slower first run of each command. Add .slide-ng/ to your .gitignore; the template already does.

The ones you use most

Command	What it does
dev	Starts the dev server at http://localhost:4230, with live reload, the side editor and the companion server that saves drawings and slide-ng-drag positions.
build	Makes a static site. --base /talk/ for a sub-path, --download to also make the PDF.
export	Opens the deck in Chromium and writes a PDF. --format png, pptx or md for the others.
format	Rewrites slides.md with tidy spacing and clean YAML.

slide-ng --version prints the version, and slide-ng <command> --help lists the flags of a command. Every flag is in the CLI reference. The Guide pages Export, Hosting and Presenting offline show them in use.