Deckhand vs Slidev

Slidev is a presentation tool for developers built on Vue and Vite: you write one Markdown file, each --- starts a slide, and you get a dev server with hot reload, themes from npm, Shiki code highlighting, Monaco editors inside slides, drawing, a presenter mode and exports. Deckhand starts from the other end: the slides are already HTML files, one per slide, and Deckhand only presents them.

Authoring

Slidev is an authoring environment. Markdown plus Vue components, layouts and themes installed from npm, LaTeX, diagrams, click animations, a built-in notes editor. It needs Node.js and a project with dependencies.

Deckhand has no authoring layer at all. A slide is a complete HTML document with its own CSS and JS, designed for a fixed 1920x1080 canvas that Deckhand scales to the screen. An optional deck.json gives the title, the ratio and the presenter notes. There is no Markdown, no components, no theme; you bring the HTML, or you have a language model write it (the README has a prompt for that). The upside is that the deck is a folder of files you own and can open in any browser, with no build step and no node_modules.

Presenting

Slidev's presenter mode lives at /presenter on the dev server: current slide, notes, next slide, a timer, several layouts, a screen mirror mode. Run slidev --remote and the server listens on your LAN address so you can open the presenter page from a phone; add a password to keep it private. Pages opened against the same dev server stay in sync, so people on the network can follow the play view while you drive from the presenter view.

Deckhand's present command fills the same three roles from one binary with no dev server: a stage link for the projector, a remote link (QR code) for your phone with notes, timer, laser pointer, black screen and audience QR, and an audience link for the room. The audience follows live on their own screens, can wander off to another slide and come back to live. It works offline on the LAN, and the optional Hub relays the presentation to people outside the room.

Export and hosting

Slidev exports to PDF, PPTX, PNG and Markdown (through playwright-chromium) and builds a static single-page app you can host on Netlify, Vercel or GitHub Pages. Deckhand has no export: the HTML files are the artifact. It hosts a deck on the Hub (deckhand push, permanent link, a week on the free plan, no limit on Pro), or you self-host the Hub.

Side by side

When to pick Slidev instead

Pick Slidev when you write the slides yourself and want a pleasant developer workflow: Markdown, hot reload, code blocks that look right, live editors, drawing, and a PDF or PPTX to send afterwards. Pick it when your team already lives in Node and Vue, when you want themes you can npm install, or when the deck must be published as a static site with its animations intact.

When Deckhand fits

Pick Deckhand when the HTML already exists, or when you would rather have an AI produce plain HTML than learn a slide DSL. Pick it when the presentation moment matters more than the editing moment: a room, a projector, your phone, people following on theirs, no internet, no account. Pick it when you want each slide sandboxed because you did not write all of it. And pick it when one binary on a bare laptop is the whole setup.

Try it

brew install stranix79/tap/deckhand, then deckhand present examples/ship-it --open. The format and the prompt for generating a deck are in the README; the hosted Hub is at deckhand.show.

Read the README deckhand.show