Presentation Slides for Developers
47.6k
Stars
2.1k
Forks
206
Open issues
100+
Contributors
AI Analysis
Slidev is a presentation framework for developers that uses Markdown as the source format, enabling slide creation through text editors rather than graphical interfaces. It excels for technical presentations, code walkthroughs, and developer-focused talks by offering built-in code highlighting, live coding, Vue component integration, and presenter mode. Best suited for software engineers, DevRels, and technical speakers; not intended for general business presentations or users preferring WYSI...
Inferred from signals mentioned in the README (tests, CI, type safety) — not a review of the actual code.
AI's overall editorial judgment — not an average of the bars above, can weigh other factors too.
Slidev turns Markdown into developer-centric presentations with live coding and Vue components
Slidev is a presentation framework built for developers who want to author slides in Markdown while retaining full access to web technologies — Vue 3 components, live code editing via Monaco, LaTeX, Mermaid diagrams, and UnoCSS utility classes. It targets engineers, developer advocates, and technical educators who find tools like PowerPoint or Google Slides limiting for code-heavy talks. With 47k+ stars, active Discord community, multilingual documentation, and NPM download badges prominently displayed, it shows meaningful adoption within the developer community, particularly in the Vue/Vite ecosystem.
Created in April 2021 by Anthony Fu, a prominent open source contributor in the Vue/Vite ecosystem. It quickly attracted attention through Fu's existing audience and a viral Twitter video preview shortly after launch.
Initial growth was driven by Anthony Fu's reputation and the novelty of Markdown-first developer presentations. The Vue/Vite ecosystem provided a ready-made audience. Sustained interest comes from conference speakers and technical educators who use it publicly, keeping steady organic discovery. At 140 stars/week as of June 2026, growth is moderate but consistent for a five-year-old tool — not accelerating rapidly, but not declining either.
NPM download badges are present but exact numbers are not captured in metadata. The project is visibly used by conference speakers in the Vue, Vite, and broader JavaScript communities — Anthony Fu himself uses it for public talks. Discord community at chat.sli.dev and a StackBlitz online playground suggest meaningful active usage. Exact production scale is not independently verifiable from available metadata, but adoption appears well-established within developer conference and technical education contexts.
Likely a Vite-based monorepo with a CLI package (@slidev/cli) orchestrating a Vue 3 SPA renderer. Appears to use file-based routing where slide separators in Markdown map to individual slide components. Themes and layouts appear to be distributed as npm packages. Monaco Editor integration suggests a sandboxed in-browser code editing pipeline. UnoCSS is likely scoped per-slide.
Not documented in README
Last push was 2026-06-03 — approximately 17 days before evaluation date — indicating active, ongoing maintenance. The project has been continuously developed for over five years with no apparent abandonment signals. Multilingual documentation (6 languages) and a maintained VSCode extension suggest sustained investment beyond the core repo.
ADOPT IF: you are a developer, technical educator, or conference speaker comfortable with Markdown, Node.js, and the Vue ecosystem who frequently needs to display code, diagrams, or interactive demos in presentations. AVOID IF: your team includes non-technical collaborators who need to edit slides, you require Microsoft Office compatibility as a primary output, or you have no tolerance for Node.js toolchain overhead. MONITOR IF: you are evaluating it for organization-wide adoption across mixed-technical teams — the toolchain dependency and Vue-centric model may be limiting factors depending on team composition.
Independent dimensions
Mainstream potential
5/10
Technical importance
7/10
Adoption evidence
7/10
- Single primary maintainer dependency: the project is closely tied to Anthony Fu's personal bandwidth and sponsorship model, creating bus-factor risk despite active community contributions.
- Vue ecosystem lock-in: deep coupling to Vue 3 and Vite means React-native or framework-agnostic teams face friction when customizing or extending beyond built-in capabilities.
- Export fidelity limitations: PDF/PPTX export from a browser-rendered SPA can produce layout inconsistencies, particularly with complex animations or live code blocks — a practical limit for high-stakes presentations.
- Toolchain overhead for simple use cases: npm init, Node.js 20+, and Vite build pipeline is substantial setup compared to Marp or reveal.js for users who only need basic formatted slides.
- Community fragmentation risk: the large number of community themes and plugins distributed as npm packages has no central quality gate, which may lead to inconsistent compatibility across Slidev versions.
Slidev is likely to remain the preferred Markdown-based presentation tool within the Vue/Vite ecosystem and among developer advocates for the foreseeable future. Broader mainstream penetration beyond this audience appears unlikely given the toolchain requirements.
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Languages
Information
- Website
- https://sli.dev
- Language
- TypeScript
- License
- MIT
- Last updated
- 9h ago
- Created
- 63mo ago
- Analyzed with
- anthropic/claude-haiku-4-5
Stars over time
Contributors over time
Top 100 contributors only — repos with more will plateau at 100.
Open issues
Add currentFrontmatter to $nav.
`router.push` with `--base` path leads to duplicated base path in navigation (v52.16.0+)
Docs: `background` is undocumented in frontmatter
[Bug] Addon preparsers are not applied to the initial render (regression of #926)
Comark block wrappers are not supported
Top contributors
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reveal.js (71k stars) is the dominant HTML-based presentation library with broader raw adoption, but requires direct HTML/JS authoring. Slidev abstracts this with Markdown and Vue components, offering a higher-level developer experience at the cost of requiring Node.js tooling.
Spectacle is React-based and similarly developer-oriented. Slidev targets Vue ecosystem developers and offers Markdown-first authoring; Spectacle requires JSX. Spectacle has roughly 10k stars versus Slidev's 47k, suggesting Slidev has broader developer traction.
presenterm (8.5k stars) renders presentations in the terminal using Markdown. It serves a different UX entirely — no browser, no web components — making it complementary rather than directly competing for the same users.
GUI-first tools that require no coding knowledge. Slidev is a worse choice for non-developers or teams needing real-time collaboration and stakeholder-friendly editing workflows. The audiences rarely overlap.
Marp is another Markdown-to-slides tool, simpler and more portable, without Vue component support or live coding. Marp suits users wanting minimal tooling; Slidev suits users wanting maximum web-technology integration.
