Get Started
← Build things with code · Mission 16 of 18

Pitch decks from plain text: your own template, a deck per prospect, a PDF by lunch

Write your pitch as one text file. Slidev turns it into a clean deck with click animations, a price table, a diagram and speaker notes, then exports a PDF you can email. It's the free, offline version of the Gamma lesson, with a template that's yours, so one spreadsheet of prospects becomes one personalised deck each.

47 minBeginnerTools: FreeStep 1 free
Tested 9 Oct 2026 · Slidev 53.0.0, Seriph theme 0.25.0, playwright-chromium 1.64.0, Node 26.7, Windows 11
A 7-slide pitch deck for a website care plan, ready to edit for your own client
Presenter view with your notes, a timer and the next slide, while the client sees only the slides
A 185KB PDF and a set of images you can email after the meeting
  • A deck generator: one row per prospect in a spreadsheet, one personalised pitch deck each
  • The same deck as PNG images for a LinkedIn post or a WhatsApp message
Before you start
  • Node.js ↗ 22.12 or newer. Type node --version in your terminal to check. Level 0's Install anything from GitHub covers it.
  • About 1.3GB of free disk space (most of it is the browser Slidev uses to make PDFs)
  • Notepad is fine for editing. VS Code ↗ is nicer.
  • Useful but optional: the numbers from Turn the audit into a pitch deck. That lesson uses Gamma, which is quicker for a one-off. Use this one when you want a template you own, that works offline and can turn out ten decks at once.
01/06Create the project0 done
STEP 01 of 06~8 min

Create the project

Slidev's own starter command sets up a folder with everything a deck needs.

  1. Slidev presenter view showing the current slide, the next slide, speaker notes, a click counter at 2 of 4 and a timer
    Where this mission ends: presenter view on your laptop, with your notes, the next slide and a timer, while the client sees only the slides.

  2. Open a terminal (PowerShell on Windows) and run the official create command. pitch-deck is the name of the folder it makes:

    Terminal
    npm init slidev@latest pitch-deck

  3. If npm asks Ok to proceed? (y), press Enter. Then it asks if it should install and start now. Type n and press Enter, so you can see each step:

    Output
      Slidev Creator  v53.0.0

  Scaffolding project in pitch-deck ...
  Done.

√ Install and start it now using npm? ... no

  start it later by:

  cd pitch-deck
  npm install
  npm run dev

  4. Do exactly what it says:

    Terminal
    cd pitch-deck
npm install
    Output
    added 690 packages, and audited 691 packages in 1m
...
21 vulnerabilities (3 low, 8 moderate, 10 high)
    TipThe install takes about a minute and the node_modules folder comes to about 520MB. You can ignore the "vulnerabilities" line: these tools only run on your own machine while you make the deck. Don't run npm audit fix --force, which npm itself says includes breaking changes.

  5. Now start it:

    Terminal
    npm run dev
    Output
      Slidev  v53.0.0

  theme       @slidev/theme-seriph
  css engine  unocss
  ...
  public slide show   > http://localhost:7148/
  presenter mode      > http://localhost:7148/presenter/
  slides overview     > http://localhost:7148/overview/
  export slides       > http://localhost:7148/export/

  6. It opens Slidev's demo deck in your browser. If it doesn't, open the public slide show address yourself. Yours will normally say 3030 (the example above uses 7148), so your address is http://localhost:3030/. Leave this window running while you work.

✓
CheckpointThe Slidev demo deck is open in your browser, and the right arrow key moves to the next slide.
If it breaks'npm.ps1 cannot be loaded because running scripts is disabled on this system' + 2 more
'npm.ps1 cannot be loaded because running scripts is disabled on this system'
Type npm.cmd instead of npm (for example npm.cmd install). It's the same program without PowerShell's script wrapper.
'npm' or 'node' is not recognised, or Node is older than 22.12
Install the LTS version from nodejs.org ↗, or run winget install --id OpenJS.NodeJS.LTS -e. Then close PowerShell and open a new window.
A red 'Failed to patch FloatingVue' error appears in the terminal
Harmless. It comes from a code-highlighting add-on this deck doesn't use, and it can appear in the dev server and during exports. The slides and the PDF are unaffected.
Still stuck? Ask the community
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