Slide decks

Slide decks are product records, like notes and issues. They live in app-owned storage, with stable ids, and show up in the desktop Decks tab. Agents create and revise them through cocurdex deck and the /cocurdex-deck skill. Export a PowerPoint or PDF file when you want a copy outside the app.

Each slide is a 16:9 canvas, 1280×720. Text is sized to fit its region. A deck has one theme, which sets colors, type, backgrounds, and decorations such as page numbers for every layout.

Decks panel

Open Decks from the right panel's view switcher.

The list on the left holds every deck. New deck creates an Untitled deck with a cover slide and starts a rename. Import PowerPoint (.pptx) brings in an existing file. Double-click a title, or choose Rename, to edit it in place — the same control as a note title. Delete asks you to confirm; the deck and its slides are removed. The row menu also exports. Hide deck list collapses the list; Show deck list brings it back. Drag the edge to resize it.

An empty list says No decks yet and offers New deck and Import PowerPoint.

create and import can store a workspace id. The list itself shows every deck, in one list.

Importing a PowerPoint file and inserting a picture use a local file picker, so those actions are in the desktop app. The browser client can still open, edit, present, and download decks.

Viewing and editing

Select a deck to open it. The toolbar shows the title and 1 / N, then:

The slide fills the center and stays 16:9. Click a text region to edit it. Empty regions read Click to add title, Click to add subtitle, or Click to add text. Press Escape to cancel. Clicking away, or Primary+Enter, saves. Under the slide, Speaker notes (placeholder Add speaker notes) saves when you leave the field.

Changing layout keeps what you wrote. Slots the new layout has stay put. A single body moves into the left column when you switch to two columns, and two text columns merge into the body when you switch back. Anything the new layout cannot hold stays on the slide as its own element, in the same place.

A picture can be right-clicked for Replace image… or Delete image. With the picture focused, Delete or Backspace removes it. A new picture is fitted in the center of the slide and keeps its aspect ratio.

The filmstrip under the notes shows every slide. Click a thumbnail to select it; its notes appear above. Right-click a thumbnail for Duplicate slide, Move earlier, Move later, and Delete slide. With a thumbnail focused, the arrow keys and Page Up / Page Down move the selection, and focus follows. Home and End jump to the first and last thumbnail.

If a save loses a race with another edit, the panel reports Could not save the change and reloads the latest deck.

Presenting

Present fills the screen with the current slide on a black 16:9 stage. Click, or use the keys below, to move. Escape leaves fullscreen and returns you to the slide you were showing.

Presenter view opens a second window titled Cocurdex Presentation for the audience, and covers this window with the presenter screen:

When another display is connected, the audience window goes fullscreen on that display. On a single display it opens as a window on the current screen, and the presenter screen says Move the audience window to the projector or shared screen. Closing the audience window ends the show.

In a browser client, Presenter view opens the audience view as a popup. If the browser blocks it, the app says Could not open the audience window. Allow pop-ups for this page and try again.

These keys work while presenting, in presenter view, and on the audience window. They are separate from the shortcuts in Settings → Shortcuts.

Themes and layouts

Pick a theme from Theme, or set its id with deck edit. The menu label is what you see in the app; the id is what the CLI uses.

On Swiss, Playful, Noir, Botanical, Blueprint, Zen, Retro, Terminal, Bauhaus, and Clinic, a Section slide shows a large chapter number counted from the section slides in the deck. Use that layout for chapter breaks, and leave the number out of the title.

Layouts

Only the slots a layout defines are shown. A body can be text or a table.

Writing Markdown

Markdown is the fastest way to write a whole deck. The app compiles it into slides; after that, the deck is ordinary product data you can edit in the panel.

• A line that is only --- separates slides. A rule inside a code fence does not.
• A slide whose heading is #, with only plain paragraphs under it, is a title slide. The first one becomes the cover, the last one the closing slide, and any other a section divider. The paragraphs become the subtitle.
• A ## heading is a content-slide title. Lists (bulleted, numbered, or task, up to five levels), paragraphs, quotes, and code fill the body.
• Exactly two ### sections, with the first one right after the title, make a two-column slide.
• A table makes a table slide. Text before or after it becomes a caption above the table. Keep one table per slide; extra tables are dropped and reported.
• A ## heading with no body is a title-only slide.
• A paragraph that starts with Notes: or 备注： starts the speaker notes. Everything after it on that slide is notes.
• Bold, italic, strikethrough, inline code, and links are kept.
• A Markdown image is skipped and reported. Add the picture with Insert image or cocurdex deck image.

On deck create, the first heading becomes the deck title when you do not pass --title.

# Q3 Review
Platform team · October 2026

---

## Highlights
- Shipped sync to all users
  - p95 latency down 38%
- Two incidents, both resolved within SLA

Notes: Open with the latency win.

---

## Plan
### Now
- Hardening
### Next
- Mobile client

---

# Thank you
Questions?

Pass the file to deck create or deck update. A Markdown update replaces every slide and its ids, and sets the theme to default. The title changes only when you pass --title. To change a deck someone is already editing, prefer ops.

Checker

deck create, deck update, and deck edit return warnings and issues. Warnings are Markdown the compiler skipped. Issues are problems in the result. deck show includes the current issues, and deck check returns them on their own.

Fix the issues before treating the deck as finished.

CLI

The daemon must be running (open the desktop app). Full command index: CLI.

cocurdex deck list [--json]
cocurdex deck show <id> [--json]
cocurdex deck create [--title <title>] [--markdown-file <path|-> | --content-file <path|->] [--workspace <id>] [--json]
cocurdex deck update <id> [--title <title>] [--markdown-file <path|-> | --content-file <path|->] [--expected-revision <n>] [--json]
cocurdex deck edit <id> --ops-file <path|-> [--expected-revision <n>] [--json]
cocurdex deck image <id> --slide <slideId> --file <path.png|path.jpg> [--alt <text>] [--replace <elementId>] [--expected-revision <n>] [--json]
cocurdex deck check <id> [--json]
cocurdex deck export <id> --output <path.pptx|path.pdf> [--format pptx|pdf] [--json]
cocurdex deck import <file.pptx> [--title <title>] [--workspace <id>] [--json]
cocurdex deck read <file.pptx> [--json]
cocurdex deck delete <id> [--json]

Passing both --markdown-file and --content-file fails with Pass either --markdown-file or --content-file, not both. With neither file, deck create stores a deck that has no slides, and deck update keeps the current slides. --title alone renames the deck and leaves the slides in place.

deck list prints id, title, slide count, revision, and updated time. deck show prints the deck plus its checker issues. deck read prints Markdown to the terminal; --json adds each slide's title, text lines, and notes. Reading a file does not create a deck.

On this computer, deck export writes --output wherever the daemon can write. Export in the panel downloads the file instead. A paired device with Read can view decks and download an export. Creating, editing, importing, and adding pictures need Interact. deck read needs Read files, and deck export needs Write files. From a paired device, deck read, deck import, deck image, and deck export only use paths inside a workspace.

Editing with ops

deck edit applies the ops in order, and saves only if every op succeeds. Slide and element ids you do not touch stay put. Read ids from deck show --json (content.slides[].id and each element's id) or from an issue's target.

[
  { "op": "setText", "slideId": "<id>", "target": "slot:title", "markdown": "Q3 **Review**" },
  { "op": "setNotes", "slideId": "<id>", "notes": "Open with the latency win." },
  { "op": "insertSlides", "index": 2, "markdown": "## Risks\n- Latency" },
  { "op": "addSlide", "layout": "title-content", "index": 3 },
  { "op": "duplicateSlide", "slideId": "<id>" },
  { "op": "moveSlide", "slideId": "<id>", "index": 0 },
  { "op": "deleteSlide", "slideId": "<id>" },
  { "op": "setLayout", "slideId": "<id>", "layout": "two-content" },
  { "op": "setTheme", "theme": "midnight" },
  { "op": "deleteElement", "slideId": "<id>", "elementId": "<element-id>" }
]

setText replaces one slot (slot:title, slot:body, …) or one free text element (element:<id>). Pass markdown or paragraphs, and only a slot the layout has. insertSlides uses the Markdown rules above; omit index to append. setLayout follows the layout rules.

--content-file is the other precise path: edit the JSON from deck show and send it back. Layout ids, slot names, speaker notes, the theme id, and element frames (on the 1280×720 canvas) are all in that document. A content update replaces the deck content and keeps the title unless you pass --title, so prefer ops when the deck is already being edited.

Images

Add a PNG or JPEG, up to 20 MB. The app keeps its own copy, so the deck still works after the source file moves.

cocurdex deck image <deck-id> --slide <slide-id> --file ./chart.png --alt "Q3 latency chart"
cocurdex deck image <deck-id> --slide <slide-id> --file ./chart-v2.png --replace <element-id>

--replace swaps the picture and keeps its frame. Remove one with Delete image or the deleteElement op. A picture referenced from ops or content JSON has to be imported with deck image first.

PowerPoint

deck read <file.pptx> prints the slide text and speaker notes as deck Markdown, with --- between slides and pictures as ![alt](file). It does not create a deck.

deck import <file.pptx> creates a new deck and leaves the file untouched. Title, title-and-content, two-column, and title-only slides map onto deck layouts in their original order. Other shapes become free text, tables, and images. Charts, SmartArt, video, and pictures other than PNG or JPEG are skipped. The panel reports Imported with some content left out and lists what it skipped; the CLI returns the same notes as warnings. Fonts, colors, and backgrounds follow the deck theme. Run deck check afterward — imported text may not fit the theme's sizes.

Export PPTX is a PowerPoint file you can keep editing in PowerPoint, Keynote, or WPS. Export PDF is a fixed copy of the slides.

Working with agents

Install the product skill pack, then invoke /cocurdex-deck. The skill uses the same CLI, so the agent does not open the database. See Skills.

People can edit the same deck in the panel while an agent works. The agent should pass --expected-revision from its last deck show, and retry from a fresh show when the write reports Deck was modified.

Related

• Desktop workspace
• Notes and issues
• CLI
• Skills
• Workspaces and data