AI agents

Every button in DeckCraft runs a command, and AI assistants can run the same commands. Any assistant that supports the Model Context Protocol (MCP) can create slides, fill them, format them and save the result as .pptx, .deckcraft or PDF.

Get the command-line tool

Assistants talk to DeckCraft through its command-line tool, deckcraft-cli:

• Windows: deckcraft-cli.exe is next to deckcraft.exe in the install folder or portable zip.
• macOS: download deckcraft-cli-<ver>-macos-universal.zip from the release page.
• Linux .deb, .rpm, .pkg.tar.zst, tarball, and FreeBSD: it’s installed alongside the app.
• Flatpak: run it as flatpak run --command=deckcraft-cli ai.storyteller.deckcraft.
• AppImage: use the tarball instead, which includes it.

If the assistant can’t find deckcraft-cli, use its full path, for example C:\Users\you\AppData\Local\Programs\ArtCraft\DeckCraft\deckcraft-cli.exe. Desktop apps often need the full path even when your terminal doesn’t.

Connect your assistant

Every assistant starts DeckCraft with the same command: deckcraft-cli mcp. DeckCraft then works in the background, with no window.

Claude Code

claude mcp add deckcraft -- deckcraft-cli mcp

Claude Desktop

Choose Settings › Developer › Edit Config, add DeckCraft to claude_desktop_config.json, then restart Claude:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "deckcraft": {
      "command": "deckcraft-cli",
      "args": ["mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Other assistants

Look for “MCP servers” in your assistant’s settings and add a local (stdio) server with the command deckcraft-cli and the argument mcp.

Ask for a presentation

Once connected, ask in plain words, for example “Make a five-slide deck on our Q3 results with a chart on slide 3, and save it as q3.pptx”.

Watch it work in the app

To see the assistant’s changes as it makes them, start DeckCraft with its control port open:

deckcraft --control 7990

Then use deckcraft-cli mcp --connect 7990 as the assistant’s command. The control port only accepts connections from your own computer.

Keep the assistant to certain folders

To stop a background assistant reading or writing files outside one folder, add a read folder and a write folder after deckcraft-cli mcp:

deckcraft-cli mcp --automation-read-root ~/Decks/project --automation-write-root ~/Decks/project/out

In a JSON config, put each flag and folder in args, with full paths, since ~ isn’t expanded there:

"args": ["mcp", "--automation-read-root", "/Users/you/Decks/project",
         "--automation-write-root", "/Users/you/Decks/project/out"]

The assistant can then only open files inside the read folder, and only save inside the write folder. Leave out the write folder and it can’t save to disk at all.

Caution

These folder limits only work in the background. They can’t be used with --connect, and an assistant connected to the running app can open and save anywhere you can.

From the command line

deckcraft-cli also works on its own, without an assistant:

deckcraft-cli convert deck.deckcraft deck.pptx            # or .pdf, .txt, .md, .png, .jpg, .gif
deckcraft-cli render deck.pptx --all slides/              # every slide as a PNG
deckcraft-cli info deck.pptx                              # what's in a presentation
deckcraft-cli commands format.                            # list commands

render has a few more options. --slide 2 draws one slide (counting from 0, so --slide 2 is the third). --scale sets pixels per point (2 by default, so a 960 by 540 point slide becomes 1920 by 1080 pixels). --transparent leaves the background out, and --edit draws what the editor shows, including placeholder prompts. render-transition draws frames of a slide transition:

deckcraft-cli render-transition deck.deckcraft --slide 1 --t 0.25,0.5,0.75 fade.png

For scripting DeckCraft’s commands, run deckcraft-cli help run, or see the developer documentation on GitHub.