Slidef

Transform your PDF presentations into beautiful web slides

Installation • Quick Start • Features • Documentation

Slidef is a CLI tool that converts your PDF presentations into a modern, web-based slide viewer. Perfect for sharing presentations, creating slide archives, or building your own slide hosting platform.

• kciter.so/talks - Personal presentation archive

• 🎯 PDF to Images - Automatically converts PDF slides to high-quality images (WebP, PNG, or JPEG)
• 📦 Optimized File Size - WebP format by default for 60% smaller files while maintaining quality
• 🖥️ Web Viewer - Beautiful, responsive slide viewer with keyboard navigation
• 🔥 Dev Server - Live development server with hot reload
• 🚀 Static Export - Generate static sites for easy deployment (GitHub Pages, Netlify, etc.)
• 🌐 Subdirectory Deployment - Support for deploying to subdirectories with baseUrl configuration
• ✏️ Slide Management - Edit slide metadata, titles, descriptions, and dates via web UI
• 🎨 Theme Customization - Customize colors and fonts to match your brand

npm install -g @slidef/cli

or using pnpm:

pnpm add -g @slidef/cli

mkdir my-slides
cd my-slides
slidef init

This creates:

my-slides/
├── slidef.config.json
├── slides/
└── .gitignore

slidef import presentation.pdf

Your slides will be converted and saved to:

slides/
└── presentation/
    ├── images/
    │   ├── slide-001.webp
    │   ├── slide-002.webp
    │   └── ...
    └── metadata.json

slidef dev

Open http://localhost:3000 to view your slides!

slidef publish

Your static site will be generated in the public/ directory, ready to deploy anywhere.

Initialize a new Slidef project in the current directory.

Options:

• --title <title> - Set the project title (default: "Slide Presentations")
• --subtitle <subtitle> - Set the project subtitle

Example:

slidef init --title "My Presentations" --subtitle "Conference talks and workshops"

Import and convert a PDF file to slides.

Options:

• --name <name> - Custom name for the slide deck (default: PDF filename)
• --scale <number> - Image resolution scale factor (default: 2)
• --format <format> - Image format: png, jpeg, or webp (default: webp)
• --quality <number> - Image quality for lossy formats (0-100, default: 85)

Examples:

# WebP with default quality (recommended)
slidef import talk.pdf --name "my-conference-talk"

# PNG for maximum quality
slidef import talk.pdf --format png

# JPEG with custom quality
slidef import talk.pdf --format jpeg --quality 90

Start a development server with live reload.

Options:

• --port <port> - Server port (default: 3000)
• --slides <dir> - Slides directory (default: "slides")

Example:

slidef dev --port 8080

Features:

• Web-based slide management (import, edit, delete)
• Live reload on file changes
• Theme preview

Generate a static site for deployment.

Options:

• --output <dir> - Output directory (default: "public")
• --slides <dir> - Slides directory (default: "slides")

Example:

slidef publish --output dist

The slidef.config.json file allows you to customize your slide viewer:

{
  "title": "My Slide Presentations",
  "subtitle": "View and manage your slide decks",
  "publishDir": "public",
  "slidesDir": "slides",
  "theme": {
    "primaryColor": "#007bff",
    "progressColor": "#A020F0",
    "fontFamily": "system-ui, -apple-system, sans-serif"
  }
}

• primaryColor - Primary accent color for buttons and links
• backgroundColor - Background color for the viewer
• textColor - Primary text color
• progressColor - Progress bar color
• fontFamily - Font family for the entire UI

Each slide deck has a metadata.json file with the following structure:

{
  "name": "presentation",
  "title": "My Awesome Presentation",
  "description": "A talk about something interesting",
  "pageCount": 42,
  "createdAt": "2025-11-05",
  "sha256": "abc123..."
}

You can edit title, description, and createdAt through the web UI in dev mode.

1. Publish your slides:

   slidef publish --output docs

2. Push to GitHub and enable GitHub Pages from the docs folder in repository settings.

If your site will be deployed to a subdirectory (e.g., https://username.github.io/my-slides/):

1. Set the baseUrl in your slidef.config.json:

   {
     "baseUrl": "/my-slides"
   }

2. Publish your slides:

   slidef publish --output docs

3. Push to GitHub and enable GitHub Pages from the docs folder in repository settings.

1. Publish your slides:

   slidef publish

2. Deploy the public/ directory using Netlify or Vercel.

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.