If you write code and you’d rather not open PowerPoint, you’ve probably run into Slidev. It bills itself as “Presentation Slides for Developers,” and that’s exactly what it is: you write each slide in Markdown, drop in Vue components and code blocks where you need them, and present the whole thing as a web page — with hot reload, syntax highlighting, presenter notes, and interactive embeds built in. With 47.6k stars on GitHub and an MIT license, it’s one of the go-to answers to “how do I make a good-looking deck from Markdown.”

This guide is an honest map of it. What Slidev actually is, how themes and examples fit together, how exporting to PDF and PowerPoint really behaves (there’s a catch), how it stacks up against the other open-source contenders, and — the part most write-ups skip — where a tool like this stops being the right one and something else takes over. If you’re weighing your options for an AI-and-agent-assisted deck workflow, it helps to know precisely what Slidev is and isn’t.

What Slidev is

Slidev runs in the browser and treats your deck as a project, not a document. You author slides in a single Markdown file, separating them with ---, and the developer tooling is the point: hot reload as you type, first-class code highlighting with line focus, LaTeX and diagrams, presenter mode with notes, and a dev server you run from your terminal. Where plain Markdown runs out of road, you embed Vue components directly in a slide — so a chart, a live counter, or your own interactive widget can sit inline next to your bullet points. Because the output is a web app, anything the web can do can live on a slide.

The trade-off is right there in the pitch: this is a developer tool, not a GUI. Your workflow is a code editor and a dev server, not a canvas with drag handles — which is exactly why developers who already like Markdown and web components reach for it, and exactly why a non-coder will bounce off it. It’s also genuinely free: no account, no watermark, no export cap, no per-seat pricing. You own the Markdown and the project around it.

Themes & examples

Most searches around Slidev are really about making it look good without designing every slide from scratch, so here’s how the pieces fit.

Slidev themes are the built-in starting point, and they’re a real strength. You set a theme with a single line in your frontmatter (theme: seriph, for example), and Slidev pulls it in. There’s an official gallery of themes plus a healthy set of community ones published as npm packages, ranging from clean editorial looks to dark developer-conference styles. Because a theme is code, a “custom Slidev theme” means creating or forking a theme package with your own layouts, fonts, and colors — more involved than swapping a stylesheet, but fully version-controllable.

Slidev examples live in the docs and the community rather than in one fill-in gallery. The official site (sli.dev) is itself built with Slidev, the repository ships starter decks, and GitHub is full of real conference talks whose source you can read and clone. If you’re searching for “slidev examples,” the highest-signal ones are the official demos and the docs source — they show nearly every feature in place. The catch for beginners is the same as with any code-first tool: an “example” here is a repository to clone and edit, not a template you fill in through a UI.

Exporting Slidev to PowerPoint & PDF

PDF export is a first-class, supported feature and it works well. Slidev has a built-in slidev export command (backed by Playwright) that renders every slide to a clean, page-per-slide PDF — the supported path, and the PDF looks exactly like your deck. You can also export to PNG images the same way.

Exporting Slidev to PowerPoint is where expectations need managing. Slidev can produce a .pptx, but the result is lossy: each slide arrives in PowerPoint as a flat image, not as editable text boxes, shapes, and layouts. So if someone downstream needs to open your deck in PowerPoint and edit it — retype a headline, restyle a chart, reflow a bullet — the Slidev .pptx won’t give them that. Slidev is built to be presented from the browser, and its editable source is Markdown-plus-Vue, not .pptx. Knowing this before you start saves a painful surprise the day a colleague asks for “the editable PowerPoint.”

Slidev vs Marp vs reveal.js

Slidev isn’t the only way to write slides as code. The two closest open-source options — the ones people mean by “Slidev alternative” — are reveal.js and Marp, and it’s worth being honest that Open Design sits in a different layer entirely rather than competing head-on.

reveal.js is the older, more raw sibling: you author in HTML (or Markdown) and wire in transitions with data-attributes, trading Slidev’s Markdown ergonomics for lower-level HTML control. If you want maximum freedom and don’t mind writing markup, reveal.js is the natural pick. Marp goes the other direction — Markdown only, deliberately minimal, no components — which makes it the fastest path when your slides are mostly text and you never want to think about a framework. Slidev sits in the middle: Markdown-first for speed, with Vue components on tap when a slide needs to do more.

All three are code-first tools with the same fundamental shape: you write the deck, you present in a browser, and editable-PowerPoint output isn’t really the point. Choosing between them is mostly about which authoring surface you want — Markdown-plus-Vue, raw HTML, or plain Markdown — not about capabilities one has and the others lack.

Where Open Design fits

Here’s the honest boundary. Slidev asks you to write the deck — every slide, in Markdown and Vue. That’s a feature if you want hand-authored, version-controlled slides with live components, and nothing here replaces it if that’s your goal.

Open Design is a different layer, and it’s a product we make, so read this with that in mind. It’s an open-source (Apache-2.0), local-first, bring-your-own-key Agent-Native Design Workspace that sits outside the coding agent you already use — Claude Code, Codex, or Cursor. Instead of hand-authoring Markdown and components, you describe the deck you want and the agent generates an editable one against a design system, so it comes out on-brand and stays editable rather than frozen as a rendered artifact. Open Design also ships first-party deck templates you can start from.

It is not a replacement for Slidev if what you want is to write slides as code with Vue components and full control — that’s Slidev’s home turf and it’s excellent at it. Open Design is for the case where you’d rather brief an agent than write markup, want the output to match a design system across many decks, and want editable files you own at the end. Reach for Slidev when the deck is the Markdown you’re writing; reach for a workspace when the deck is one on-brand output among many that an agent produces for you.

FAQ

Is Slidev free? Yes. Slidev is open source under the MIT license — free to use commercially, with no account, no watermark, and no export limits. You run it yourself from your own project.

How do I use Slidev themes? Set a theme in your slide frontmatter (for example theme: seriph) and Slidev installs and applies it. There’s an official gallery plus community themes on npm. A custom theme means creating or forking a theme package with your own layouts, fonts, and colors — it’s code, not a stylesheet you swap.

Can I export Slidev to PowerPoint? Slidev can export to .pptx, but it’s lossy — each slide lands as a flat image, not editable text and shapes. PDF and PNG export (via slidev export) is the clean, first-class path. If you need an editable PowerPoint, Slidev isn’t the right source.

Slidev vs Marp vs reveal.js — which should I use? All three are open-source, code-first, MIT-licensed. Pick Slidev for Markdown-plus-Vue components (great when slides need to be interactive), reveal.js for raw HTML control, and Marp for the simplest Markdown-only decks. None targets editable-PowerPoint output.

Do I need to know how to code to use Slidev? Effectively, yes. Slidev is a developer tool — you work in a text editor and a terminal with Markdown, Vue, and a dev server, not a drag-and-drop GUI. If you’d rather describe a deck in plain language, that’s the gap an agent-native workspace like Open Design fills.

The takeaway

Slidev earns its 47.6k stars: it’s a free, MIT-licensed, developer-first way to build good-looking decks from Markdown, with real themes, hot reload, live Vue components, and clean PDF export. Just go in clear-eyed — it’s a tool you write in, not an app you click through, and “export to editable PowerPoint” isn’t something it does well. If you want to author decks as code, Slidev (or reveal.js / Marp) is a great home. If you’d rather describe a deck and have your agent generate an editable, on-brand one you own, that’s where an Agent-Native Design Workspace picks up.