Get started¶

Create a small deck in an existing Zensical project. First, install and configure the theme.

Write your first slide¶

Create docs/slides/first.md:

---
template: slide.html
---

# Authoring process

- Write in **Markdown**.
- Add slides to navigation
- Add speaker notes when you need them.

The front matter selects the slide template. The rest is ordinary Markdown.

Add a second slide¶

Create docs/slides/next.md:

---
template: slide.html
---

# What comes next?

- Pick one thing you want your audience to remember.
- Stick to one idea per slide.

Put the deck in your navigation¶

In zensical.toml, add a section for the deck to your existing nav list:

[project]
nav = [
  { "My deck" = [
    { "First slide" = "slides/first.md" },
    { "Next slide" = "slides/next.md" },
  ] },
]

Each deck gets its own section. The order of the entries determines the presentation order.

Preview the deck¶

From your project directory, run:

zensical serve

For a uv project:

uv run zensical serve

Open My deck → First slide in the browser. Press Right arrow to go forward, Left arrow to go back, and hit Escape or click the up-arrow button to return to the deck overview.

Explore the authoring reference for layouts and notes, or read Presenting before giving your talk.