# Kadal Deck

> Kadal Deck is the AI presentation app: AI drafts your slides with you, then you rehearse the talk with narration, a timeline and a teleprompter, present with your phone as the remote, and run a live room where the audience votes, asks and reacts. A slideshow that survives contact with a real audience. Open source; hosting from $4 a month.

Build it. Rehearse it. Own the room. Kadal Deck is with the speaker for the whole talk, in four stages:

- Build it: an AI assistant in the online builder drafts and revises the deck on the workspace's own AI key (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, OpenRouter); or an agent builds it through the MCP server and the Agent Skill; or you write one deck.mdx (Markdown/MDX) in your editor or the browser, with edit-on-the-slide, a media panel, 17 themes and a Pro library of 132 backgrounds and layouts.
- Rehearse it: narration reads the notes aloud and turns the pages (browser voice or Kokoro in the browser); a per-slide timing plan with a pacing badge; a teleprompter window; glossary term cards.
- Present it: the presenter view (notes, timer, next slide, drawing, camera, recording); the phone as the remote (live slide, notes, timer, pen, laser aimed by moving the phone); a Copilot that drives the deck on request; offline builds; export to PDF, PNG and PPTX.
- Own the room: the audience joins from their phones with a link or QR code (no app, no sign-in): polls, quizzes, word clouds, Q&A with upvotes, reactions, raised hands and a pace check; analytics afterwards.

The tour, a deck that shows every feature: https://decks.kadal.cc/@kadal-hq/tour/

Made by Kadal (Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India). Postal address: Awfis OMR, No. 111 (Old No. 141), Rajiv Gandhi Road, Old Mahabalipuram Road, Kottivakkam Village, Chennai, Tamil Nadu 600041, India. Contact: hello@kadal.cc; product help and billing: support@kadal.cc. Engine source: https://github.com/kadalcc/deck (AGPL-3.0-or-later, commercial licence available). npm: @kadal/deck. Payments through Paddle.com as merchant of record.

## Plans (USD per month; annual / monthly billing)

- Free: free — Unlimited public decks; Live room for 25 people at once; 250 MB storage; 3 versions kept per deck; View counts; 1 API token for publishing from CI; A Kadal watermark on slides, and ads on the first and last
- Starter: $4 annual, $6 monthly — Unlisted and passcode-protected decks; Live room for 100 people at once; 2 GB storage; 10 versions kept per deck; Time spent on each slide; No watermark, no ads; A PDF download button for viewers; Email support
- Pro: $8 annual, $11 monthly — Everything in Starter; Live room for 500 people at once; 25 GB storage; 100 versions kept per deck; Full analytics with CSV export; 132 premium backgrounds and layouts, new genres added; The builder's assistant follows the Studio design skill; 20 API tokens; Priority email support
- Team: $16 annual, $22 monthly (2 users; extra users $8/$11) — Everything in Pro, for 2 users; A shared workspace and its decks; Live room for 1,000 people at once; 25 GB storage per user; 20 API tokens per user; Add users at $8/mo annual, $11/mo monthly
- Not in any plan yet: Custom domains, Single sign-on (SSO).

Details: https://deck.kadal.cc/pricing/

## Desktop app

macOS (universal), Windows and Linux; free, and it updates itself: https://deck.kadal.cc/download/

## Use cases

- [Make a presentation in Markdown](https://deck.kadal.cc/use-cases/markdown-presentations/): Make a presentation from a Markdown file: write slides separated by ---, add steps and speaker notes, present with a presenter view, and export to PDF or PPTX. A step-by-step guide with Kadal Deck.
- [Slides for conference talks](https://deck.kadal.cc/use-cases/conference-talks/): Write a conference talk in Markdown with code that steps line by line, speaker notes that follow your clicks, a countdown timer, and audience questions ranked by votes. Present offline or from a published link.
- [Slides for lectures and teaching](https://deck.kadal.cc/use-cases/lectures/): Teach from Markdown slides with KaTeX maths that steps line by line, timed quizzes the class answers from their phones, and notes students can read after class. Free for public decks and rooms of 25.
- [Pitch decks you can send and track](https://deck.kadal.cc/use-cases/pitch-decks/): Write a pitch deck in Markdown, share it with investors by an unlisted or passcode link, see how long each slide was read, and keep a PDF and an editable PPTX file for the data room.
- [Sprint demos and engineering reviews](https://deck.kadal.cc/use-cases/team-demos/): Present sprint demos and engineering reviews from Markdown in your repository: Mermaid diagrams, runnable code on the slide, and a deck published from CI on every merge.
- [Workshops with a live audience](https://deck.kadal.cc/use-cases/workshops/): Run a workshop where the audience joins from their phones by QR code: live polls, timed quizzes with a leaderboard, word clouds, questions ranked by votes and a pace meter. No app or sign-in for the audience.

## Compared with other tools

- [Kadal Deck vs Slidev](https://deck.kadal.cc/compare/slidev/): Kadal Deck and Slidev compared: both turn a text file into slides with live code, drawing and export. Slidev is MIT, Vue-based and mature; Kadal Deck uses MDX and React, with audience polls and hosted publishing built in.
- [Kadal Deck vs reveal.js](https://deck.kadal.cc/compare/revealjs/): Kadal Deck and reveal.js compared: reveal.js is the long-standing MIT HTML presentation framework with a large plugin ecosystem. Kadal Deck writes slides in MDX and adds a live audience room, PowerPoint export and hosted publishing.
- [Kadal Deck vs Slides.com](https://deck.kadal.cc/compare/slides-com/): Kadal Deck and Slides.com compared: Slides.com is a hosted visual editor built on reveal.js, with real-time collaboration and AI tools. Kadal Deck writes slides as MDX text in your repository, adds audience polls and questions, and costs $4–16 a month.

## More

- [Themes](https://deck.kadal.cc/themes/): all 17 themes, light and dark
- [Pro library](https://deck.kadal.cc/library/): 132 premium backgrounds and layouts in 15 genres (Pro and Team, on deck.kadal.cc hosting)
- [Changelog](https://deck.kadal.cc/changelog/)
- [Sponsor the engine](https://deck.kadal.cc/sponsor/)
- [Advertise on free decks](https://deck.kadal.cc/advertise/)

## Docs

- [Introduction](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/): Kadal Deck is the AI presentation app — what it is, the four stages of a talk it helps with (build it, rehearse it, present it, own the room) and the docs for each, how its pieces fit together, and what is free.
- [Install](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/getting-started/): What you need, how to create a deck with any package manager, what every file in the project is for, and how to upgrade.
- [Your first deck in 5 minutes](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/first-deck/): Create a deck, write a slide that reveals one point per click, present it with speaker notes, and publish it to a link your audience can open.
- [Give a talk with a live audience](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/guides/live-audience/): Let the room join from their phones, vote in polls, answer a timed quiz, ask and upvote questions and react, while you click from your phone and read the results afterwards.
- [Present from your phone, even on a static host](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/guides/phone-remote/): Pair your phone with the presenter view and use it as a clicker, laser pointer and notes card, whether the deck is published, running on your laptop, or a plain build on GitHub Pages.
- [Live code on a slide](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/guides/live-code/): Put an editor on a slide, run JavaScript, TypeScript or Python in it during the talk, import npm packages, show a diff, and save edits back to your files.
- [Build a deck with an AI agent](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/guides/ai-agent/): Have an AI agent write a deck, check it, look at every slide and fix what it sees, then publish it, from Claude Code, any MCP client, or the builder on deck.kadal.cc.
- [Pick and customise a theme](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/guides/theme/): Try every theme on your own slides, pick one, set its colours, logo and fonts, change one variable in your CSS, and eject a theme when you want to rewrite it.
- [Export to PDF, PNG and PPTX](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/guides/export/): Turn a deck into a PDF with bookmarks, one PNG per slide, a PowerPoint file (pictures or editable text) and Markdown, from the command line, from the browser, or in CI.
- [Use Kadal Deck in VS Code](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/guides/vscode/): Install the extension, write with the deck previewed beside you, reorder slides by dragging, let IntelliSense and the checker catch mistakes, format, present and export without leaving the editor.
- [Migrate a Slidev deck](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/coming-from-slidev/): Convert a Slidev deck with one command or move it by hand, with what converts, what the import report lists, the theme names, and every Slidev spelling beside its Kadal Deck equivalent.
- [Coming from reveal.js](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/coming-from-reveal/): Convert a reveal.js deck with one command and keep its look in reveal's own twelve themes. What converts, which reveal.js options, classes, events and media behaviours work as they did, and what the import report lists.
- [MDX slides](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/writing-slides/): How deck.mdx is cut into slides; headmatter and frontmatter, defaults, includes, speaker notes, styles for one slide, your own components, and the built-in ones.
- [Layouts and slots](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/layouts/): The 19 built-in layouts, how slots split a slide into regions, the keys layouts read, layouts that themes add, and how to write your own.
- [Clicks and animation](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/clicks-and-animation/): Steps within a slide, switches, hand-drawn marks, direction-aware styles, transitions between slides (your own too), auto-animate and motion.
- [Code](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/code/): Build-time highlighting with Shiki, stepped line highlights, code marks, tabs, snippets from files, TwoSlash types, magic move, and live Monaco editors that run code.
- [Maths, diagrams and sketches](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/math-diagrams-sketches/): KaTeX maths with lines that light up per click, Mermaid and PlantUML diagrams, and Excalidraw sketches drawn in code that tour one region per click.
- [Components](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/components/): Placed-by-hand elements, click-aware video and sound, Lottie animations, 3D models, colour grades, credits for media, components that know where and in which scheme they are drawn, slide numbers and titles, and embedded Bluesky posts.
- [Icons](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/icons/): Lucide icons out of the box and any of Iconify's 200,000 icons by name, as a component, a tag or a utility class, bundled into the build so a deck needs no network.
- [Comark syntax](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/comark/): Turn on comark to write components, classes and attributes in plain Markdown without JSX, with inline components, styled spans, attributes after any element, and blocks with named slots.
- [Layers, controls and pages](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/layers-and-pages/): Put a footer, a logo or a page number on every slide with layers, add your own buttons beside the deck's controls, and give the deck pages of its own such as a handout.
- [Narration](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/narration/): Rehearse with the deck reading your notes aloud and turning its own pages, in the browser's voice, Kokoro in the browser, or clips baked with kadal-deck narrate.
- [Glossary term cards](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/glossary/): A glossary.yaml beside the deck links the first mention of each term on a slide to a definition card.
- [Presenter view and keys](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/presenter-and-keyboard/): The presenter view's timer, teleprompter, notes and tools, the phone remote, drawing, the camera and recording, display settings, the context menu, every keyboard shortcut and how to add your own.
- [Phone remote](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/phone-remote/): Drive the presenter view from your phone, with a live copy of the slide, your notes, the timer, a laser and a pen, paired by a QR code that changes every 30 seconds.
- [Remote relay](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/relay/): kadal-deck relay carries the phone remote's messages for a deck on a static host, with its flags, its password, the tunnel, and how to run it on a server.
- [The live room](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/live-room/): How the audience joins, follows and roams, and every live component (polls, word clouds, quizzes, questions, reactions, pace) with its options.
- [Build and host anywhere](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/build-and-host/): Build a deck into a static site and put it on GitHub Pages, Netlify, Vercel, Cloudflare, a container or any file server, with link previews, an offline app and no network at all if you want.
- [The hosted service](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/publishing/): Publish a deck to deck.kadal.cc or write one in the browser, then present it with a live room; workspaces, addresses, visibility, passcodes, versions, analytics and API tokens for CI.
- [Export reference](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/export/): Every kadal-deck export flag and format, the browser exporter, the Download button, posters for embedded pages and the print view's URL parameters.
- [Themes and backgrounds](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/themes-and-backgrounds/): The 17 themes and how a deck finds them, the theme menu, themeConfig, the brand and lecture themes, fonts, addons and theme eject. Slide backgrounds have their own page.
- [Backgrounds](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/backgrounds/): Everything that can sit behind a slide — colours, pictures, tiled patterns, video and pages, the Pro library's premium backgrounds and Kadal Store's shaders, the free built-in components and their props — and the backgrounds removed in 0.6 with how to keep one.
- [Pro backgrounds and layouts](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/pro-backgrounds-and-layouts/): The premium library of backgrounds and layouts on Kadal Deck Pro and Team, Kadal Store's shaders and what a store purchase unlocks, how a `pro/` name works, what happens off our hosting, and the runtime contract for remote packs.
- [Writing a theme](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/writing-a-theme/): Make a Kadal Deck theme or addon package: scaffold it, set the tokens in light and dark, style the layouts, add layouts and layers, read themeConfig, load fonts, test and publish.
- [The renderer contract](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/islands/): How a slide holds a component from any framework: islands, renderers, lazy registration and hydration on arrival.
- [Web components](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/islands/web-components/): Custom elements on a slide, with no framework at all: built into the engine.
- [Vue](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/islands/vue/): Vue 3 components on a slide with @kadal/deck-vue.
- [Svelte](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/islands/svelte/): Svelte 5 components on a slide with @kadal/deck-svelte and its stamping Vite plugin.
- [Solid](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/islands/solid/): Solid components on a slide with @kadal/deck-solid: the .tsx collision and how to settle it.
- [Preact](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/islands/preact/): Preact components on a slide with @kadal/deck-preact: no plugin needed.
- [Qwik](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/islands/qwik/): Qwik components on a slide with @kadal/deck-qwik: component$, the define, and useTask$.
- [Angular](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/islands/angular/): Angular standalone components on a slide with @kadal/deck-angular: zoneless, JIT, no build plugin.
- [Fresh](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/islands/fresh/): Fresh islands on a slide with @kadal/deck-fresh: which is Preact, and why that is the honest answer.
- [Rust and WebAssembly](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/islands/wasm/): WebAssembly islands with @kadal/deck-wasm: the deckMount ABI, Leptos from Rust, and hand-written WAT.
- [Python](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/islands/python/): Python islands with @kadal/deck-python: CPython in the browser through Pyodide.
- [AI agents and MCP](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/ai-agents/): The local MCP server that writes, checks, renders and publishes a deck; the remote one that manages your account's decks; the Agent Skill; and the AI assistant and Copilot in the dashboard.
- [Use a local model](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/local-models/): Run the builder's assistant and the presenter's Copilot on a model on your own computer (Ollama, LM Studio, llama.cpp or any OpenAI-compatible server), and drive deck folders from an agent on a local model through kadal-deck mcp.
- [VS Code extension](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/vscode/): Every view, command and setting of Kadal Deck for VS Code, what the language support covers, and how to fix the usual problems.
- [Prettier plugin](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/prettier/): Format decks with Prettier through @kadal/prettier-plugin, in any editor or in CI, the same way kadal-deck format does.
- [CLI reference](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/cli/): Every kadal-deck command and flag (new, import, theme eject, dev, build, serve, relay, ci, check, format, info, screenshot, export, narrate, login, publish, media, mcp), plus create-deck, exit codes and environment variables.
- [Self-hosting the room](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/self-hosting/): Run a deck and its live room on your own infrastructure, with the room protocol, the endpoints a host serves, the relay for the phone remote, and what the AGPL asks of you.
- [Security model for published decks](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/security/): Why published decks live on their own origin, decks.kadal.cc, apart from your account, how presenters sign in with tickets, and what a passcode protects.
- [Configuration](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/configuration/): Every deck setting and every slide frontmatter key, with its type, default and meaning, as the engine defines them.
- [Component reference](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/reference/components/): Every built-in component of Kadal Deck 0.13.0, with its props, defaults and an example.
- [Pages and URL parameters](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/reference/urls/): Every page a deck serves (the presenter view, the audience page, the remote, notes, export…) and the URL parameters it reads.
- [Licensing](https://deck.kadal.cc/docs/licensing/): The engine is AGPL-3.0-or-later with a commercial licence available; the hosted service is a paid product.

## More from Kadal

- [Kadal UI](https://ui.kadal.cc): Components you own: a power-user data grid for React, copied into your project.
- [Kadal Store](https://store.kadal.cc): Printable planners, music, sound effects, shaders and 3D. Pay once, keep the files.
- [Sanket](https://sanket.kadal.cc): Indian Sign Language recognition that runs in your browser and uploads nothing.
- [Ooru](https://ooru.kadal.cc): A three-word address for every 12.5 m of Chennai, and a live map of power cuts.
- [Kadal Studio](https://work.kadal.cc): The studio behind these: we build AI products end to end, for your team too.
- [kadal.cc](https://kadal.cc): Everything we have shipped, as a sea you swim down through.
- [pmithunish.com](https://pmithunish.com): Mithunish Prabhakaran, who builds all of it.

## Legal

- [Terms](https://deck.kadal.cc/terms/)
- [Privacy](https://deck.kadal.cc/privacy/)
- [Refunds](https://deck.kadal.cc/refunds/)