Matúš LacoandClaude Opus 5.5
c871c5f634
There was no way to turn a presentation into an animated GIF. file.export now writes one: format
`gif` (or a .gif path), one frame per slide drawn by the slide renderer and shown for
secondsPerSlide, encoded with the `image` crate's GIF encoder (already a dependency, no new
crates) with a 256-colour palette per frame: exact when a slide has 256 colours or fewer,
NeuQuant otherwise. Slides are composited onto white.
Options: width (small 640, medium 960 (default), large 1280, extraLarge 1920, or 16-3840 px; the
height follows the slide's aspect ratio, no side over 3840), secondsPerSlide (0.1-600, default 5,
written in GIF hundredths), loop (forever by default, or once: no NETSCAPE2.0 block), slides (a
list of indices, in play order) and includeHidden (hidden slides are skipped by default).
Out-of-range or wrongly typed values, NaN and infinities are BadParams errors, never panics; at
most 500 frames and 200 million pixels in total, checked before anything is rendered.
- Engine: crates/engine/src/gif_export.rs (options, frame list, size, encoder);
cmd::file::gif_bytes, save_bytes("gif"), format_for_path(".gif").
- UI: the Export… dialog (Command palette; the app has no File menu yet) gets "Animated GIF (.gif)" with Size, Seconds per slide, From/To slide,
Loop forever and Include hidden slides; an invalid range or value keeps the dialog open with a
message. The web build downloads the bytes (image/gif).
- CLI: convert IN OUT.gif, run --export OUT.gif --export-params JSON; usage lists the format and
options.
- MCP: the export tool lists gif and width/secondsPerSlide/loop (slides and includeHidden now
apply to PDF and GIF).
- Docs: file-format parity GIF row, gaps (video export remains), parity checklist row M -> P
(P2 breadth 36% -> 37%, overall 79%), control protocol, MCP, README, ROADMAP progress log.
Transitions and build animations are not animated in the GIF (tracked with video export).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
DeckCraft
Presentations and slide shows; an open-source, clean-room reimplementation of Microsoft PowerPoint, rebuilt in pure Rust.
Build decks with themes, layouts, shapes, pictures, tables, charts, transitions and animations, open and save PowerPoint files, and present them full screen. Native on macOS, Windows, Linux and FreeBSD, and in the browser. Every button is also a command that the CLI and AI agents (through MCP) can drive.
DeckCraft on getartcraft.com · ArtCraft · All Crafting Apps
Note
ArtCraft is a community of artists from all walks of life. Painters, photographers, filmmakers, illustrators, designers, animators, hobbyists, and people who picked up a pencil last week. If you make things, you're one of us. Come say hi on Discord.
What works · Getting started · Agents, CLI and MCP · Roadmap · Downloads · The Crafting Apps · License
What works today
DeckCraft is in alpha, heading for beta (see the roadmap). Today it can:
- Make decks: slide masters and eleven layouts with placeholders that inherit position and formatting, eight original themes with colour and font schemes, sections, notes, comments, headers and footers, custom slide sizes.
- Draw: 150+ preset shapes with adjust handles, connectors that stay glued to shapes, freeform, curve and scribble tools, merge shapes (union, combine, fragment, intersect, subtract), gradient, picture and pattern fills, outlines with dashes and arrowheads, shadows, glow, soft edges and reflections.
- Write: in-place text editing with full font and paragraph formatting, bullets and numbering, columns, autofit, vertical text, fields and hyperlinks.
- Add content: pictures with crop and corrections, tables with styles, charts, SmartArt basics, audio and video (MP3, AAC, FLAC, ALAC, Ogg, Opus, WAV, AIFF; H.264, HEVC, VP9, AV1).
- Present: transitions (including Morph), entrance/emphasis/exit and motion-path animations, by-paragraph builds, full-screen slide show, presenter view, pen, rehearse timings, media playback.
- Exchange files: open and save PowerPoint
.pptx, export PDF (slides, notes pages, handouts with selectable text), PNG/JPEG, an animated GIF of the deck and outlines. Unsaved work is kept by AutoRecover. - Automate: 200+ commands with undo, all scriptable from the CLI, a JSON control channel and an MCP server for AI agents.
 Shape Format contextual tab and selection handles |
 Format Shape pane: gradient type, direction and stops |
 Slide Sorter with each slide's transition |
 Dark mode, with a native chart |
The built-in sample deck, rendered by deckcraft-cli render --sample --all
Getting started
git clone https://github.com/storytold/deckcraft
cd deckcraft
cargo run --release -p deckcraft-cli -- render --sample --all --scale 1 out/
On Linux, the build also needs the ALSA headers for slide-show sound: alsa-lib-devel on Fedora,
libasound2-dev on Debian and Ubuntu, alsa-lib on Arch. Without them it stops at alsa-sys.
Fonts come from craft-fonts: clone it next to this repo
(../craft-fonts) and local builds pick it up automatically; without it DeckCraft uses your system
fonts.
Each GitHub release has ready-made builds, on Linux as
an AppImage, a .deb, an .rpm and a tarball. On Gentoo, the community ::snakebyte
overlay packages the Linux release as
app-office/deckcraft-bin (not maintained by the DeckCraft team):
eselect repository add snakebyte git https://github.com/switch87/snakebyte-overlay.git
emaint sync -r snakebyte
echo 'app-office/deckcraft-bin ~amd64' >> /etc/portage/package.accept_keywords/deckcraft
emerge --ask app-office/deckcraft-bin
Logs
The desktop app writes its log records to standard error and to logs/deckcraft.log in the
settings directory, beside ui.json and prefs.json (Linux ~/.config/deckcraft/logs/, or
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/deckcraft/logs/; macOS ~/Library/Application Support/DeckCraft/logs/; Windows
%APPDATA%\DeckCraft\logs\). A start from a desktop menu or the Dock has no terminal, so this file
is what to attach to a bug report: the crash guard's panic report, a failed crash-recovery save,
PowerPoint parts skipped on import and audio output problems land there. Each launch moves the
previous log to deckcraft.1.log (and that one to deckcraft.2.log), so the log of a run that
crashed survives the next start. The file stops growing at 16 MiB. --version writes no file.
| Variable | Effect |
|---|---|
RUST_LOG |
Log levels for standard error and the log file. Default: info for DeckCraft's own crates, warn for everything else. env_logger-style directives replace that, e.g. RUST_LOG=debug, RUST_LOG=warn,deckcraft_pptx=trace or RUST_LOG=info,wgpu_core=warn; a directive ending in * covers every target starting with it (deckcraft*=debug). |
The logger is apps/deckcraft/src/logging.rs; the realtime audio callback does not log. The web
app logs to the browser console instead.
Agents, CLI and MCP
Every action in DeckCraft is a command with a stable id, so people, scripts and AI agents use the same verbs:
deckcraft-cli commands format. # list commands
deckcraft-cli run --sample --cmd 'slide.new={"layout":"titleOnly","title":"Hello"}' --save hello.deckcraft
deckcraft-cli mcp # MCP server over stdio (headless)
deckcraft-cli mcp --connect 7990 # drive the running app (deckcraft --control 7990)
Roadmap
DeckCraft is in alpha. It covers 79% of PowerPoint's features by breadth (92% of the core ones, measured) and is about 55% of the way to replacing PowerPoint for real work (estimated). See ROADMAP.md for the stage, numbers by dimension and what's next, docs/target-app-parity.md for the full assessment, docs/gaps.md for every known shortfall and docs/parity-checklist.md for the feature-by-feature checklist.
Downloads
Download DeckCraft from GitHub: the latest release has every build listed below, and all releases has earlier versions and their notes. <ver> in the file names is the version number, and SHA256SUMS.txt lists a checksum for every file.
Windows
| Build | Installer | Portable |
|---|---|---|
| x64 (64-bit Intel/AMD) | deckcraft-<ver>-windows-x64.msi |
deckcraft-<ver>-windows-x64-portable.zip |
| arm64 (Snapdragon and other ARM PCs) | deckcraft-<ver>-windows-arm64.msi |
deckcraft-<ver>-windows-arm64-portable.zip |
| x86 (32-bit) | deckcraft-<ver>-windows-x86.msi |
deckcraft-<ver>-windows-x86-portable.zip |
Installers and executables are code-signed.
If the app doesn't open on Windows: the desktop app initializes only DirectX 12 by default.
Letting wgpu also create an OpenGL instance can crash some graphics drivers (AMD's
atio6axx.dll) before the window appears, so the app would flash in Task Manager and quit.
WGPU_BACKEND overrides the default for troubleshooting (for example dx12 or vulkan). In
PowerShell, from the folder containing the executable:
$env:WGPU_BACKEND = "vulkan"
& .\deckcraft.exe
Remove-Item Env:WGPU_BACKEND # restore the default for later launches
An explicit gl override can bring the driver crash back on affected systems. The macOS, Linux
and web backend defaults are unchanged.
macOS
| Build | File | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| App, universal (Apple silicon + Intel) | deckcraft-<ver>-macos-universal.dmg |
Signed and notarized |
| Command-line tool, universal | deckcraft-cli-<ver>-macos-universal.zip |
Signed and notarized |
Linux
| Format | x86_64 | aarch64 (ARM64) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| AppImage | deckcraft-<ver>-linux-x86_64.AppImage |
deckcraft-<ver>-linux-aarch64.AppImage |
Runs anywhere; updates itself with AppImageUpdate (.zsync files) |
| Flatpak | deckcraft-<ver>-linux-x86_64.flatpak |
deckcraft-<ver>-linux-aarch64.flatpak |
Sandboxed; flatpak install --user <file> |
| Debian/Ubuntu | deckcraft-<ver>-linux-x86_64.deb |
deckcraft-<ver>-linux-aarch64.deb |
|
| Fedora/RHEL/openSUSE | deckcraft-<ver>-linux-x86_64.rpm |
deckcraft-<ver>-linux-aarch64.rpm |
|
| Tarball | deckcraft-<ver>-linux-x86_64.tar.gz |
deckcraft-<ver>-linux-aarch64.tar.gz |
Unpack anywhere |
RISC-V 64 (riscv64): deckcraft-<ver>-linux-riscv64.tar.gz, a tarball only (cross-compiled; needs glibc 2.39+, e.g. Ubuntu 24.04+).
FreeBSD
| Build | File |
|---|---|
| x86_64 | deckcraft-<ver>-freebsd-x86_64.tar.gz |
Web (WebAssembly)
| Build | File | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Static site | deckcraft-web-<ver>.zip |
Runs in a modern browser; host it on any static server |
The Crafting Apps
DeckCraft is one of the Crafting Apps: free, open-source creative tools from the ArtCraft team, each written from scratch in Rust and each able to stand on its own.
| App | What it's for | Code | Learn more | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
PhotoCraft | Image editing: layers, masks, type and real PSD files | GitHub | Website |
 |
VectorCraft | Vector illustration | GitHub | Website |
 |
FilmCraft | Video editing, color and sound | GitHub | Website |
 |
LightCraft | Photo library and raw development | GitHub | Website |
 |
PdfCraft | Reading, organizing and protecting PDFs | GitHub | Website |
 |
EffectCraft | Motion graphics and visual effects | GitHub | Website |
 |
DesignCraft | Page layout and publishing | GitHub | Website |
 |
DeckCraft | Presentations and slide shows · you are here | GitHub | Website |
And ArtCraft itself, our AI image and video studio for artists who want real control.
Come make things with us
Our Discord is where artists of every kind hang out: people who paint, shoot, draw, cut film, set type, and people still figuring out what they like to make. Share what you're working on, ask for help, tell us what's broken, or tell us what you wish these tools could do. Whatever your medium and however long you've been at it, you're welcome here.
discord.gg/artcraft · getartcraft.com · The Crafting Apps · DeckCraft
License and credits
DeckCraft is dual-licensed under MIT or Apache-2.0, at your option. Copyright (c) 2026 ArtCraft Team and the DeckCraft contributors. Required notices are in NOTICE.
Bundled fonts, icons, images and other assets keep their own open licenses; each one is listed with its author, source and license in ATTRIBUTION.md.
DeckCraft's themes, layouts, shape geometry, icons and sample decks are original work, drawn or generated in code; no Microsoft artwork, fonts, themes or templates are used.
The ArtCraft name, wordmark and logos in docs/brand/ are trademarks of the
ArtCraft Team and are not covered by this license. They may be used only unmodified, and only as
part of this repository and DeckCraft, under docs/brand/LICENSE-brand.txt.
Forks and modified versions must remove them.
Microsoft and PowerPoint are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies. Adobe, Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, Lightroom, Acrobat, After Effects and InDesign are trademarks or registered trademarks of Adobe Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. DeckCraft is an independent, open-source project and is not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by Microsoft Corporation or Adobe Inc.; these names are used only to describe the workflows it is compatible with.
Made by the ArtCraft team and community.