Slides overview

Slides is a presentation module built on ShareOut’s infrastructure. Each deck is a live artifact with two URLs — one for editing, one for sharing — backed by a Y.js CRDT document.

When to use Slides

Situation	Why Slides fits
Team deck collaboration	Conflict-free real-time editing via Y.js
Sales or demo decks	Shareable published URL, no export step
Training or talks	Speaker notes, countdown timer, laser pointer
Data-heavy content	Free-form HTML canvas — embed any chart or widget

For static documents without interactive data, a standard published artifact may be simpler.

Present this (AI deck)

Turn any published HTML page into a sibling slides deck — AI reads the production HTML, builds a 5–9 slide reveal.js outline, and publishes a new private artifact in the same workspace. Rate-limited per user; requires AI configured.

POST /v1/artifacts/{id}/present
Authorization: Bearer {token}

Returns { "artifact_id", "url" } for the new deck. The workspace assistant also exposes a present_artifact tool. Open the result in Home like any other page — edit in Slides or quick Edit mode, then publish when ready.

Editor vs published URL

Every presentation has two artifacts created at the same time:

Mode	URL	Access
Editor	shareout.site/a/{slug}	Authenticated collaborators
Published	shareout.site/p/{slug}	Anyone (based on visibility)

Changes in the editor propagate to the published view in real time over WebSocket — typical latency is 50–200 ms.

Architecture

A presentation is a single Y.js document with five maps:

• meta — title, dimensions, fonts, colors, default transition
• slides — ordered array of slide metadata (id, owner, overrides, hidden, locked)
• slideContent — per-slide HTML as Y.Text for collaborative character-level sync
• speakerNotes — per-slide Markdown notes as Y.Text
• presentationState — live presenter state (current slide, laser position, countdown)

Media (images, video) is stored in blobs and referenced by blob ID from slide HTML.

Quick start

const sdk = new ShareOut();

// 1. Create a presentation
const { editorUrl, publishedUrl } = await sdk.slides.create({
  title: 'Q4 Review',
  aspectRatio: '16:9',
  visibility: 'public',
});

// 2. Open and add slides
const presentation = await sdk.slides.open('q4-review');
await presentation.connect();

const slide = presentation.slides.add();
presentation.slides.setContent(slide.id, '<h1>Q4 Results</h1>');

// 3. Observe real-time changes from collaborators
presentation.slides.observe(slides => renderSlideList(slides));

Publishing a slides artifact

sdk.slides.create() calls POST /v1/publish internally and returns both artifact IDs. You do not publish slides through the standard publish endpoint — use sdk.slides.create() instead.

Visibility can be changed at any time:

presentation.publish.setVisibility('public');   // 'private' | 'workspace' | 'public'
presentation.publish.unpublish();               // temporarily hide
presentation.publish.republish();               // restore

(unlisted is a retired legacy alias, still accepted on the API and treated as public.)

The shareable link is always the published URL:

const url = presentation.publish.getUrl();
// https://shareout.site/p/q4-review

Key features

• Free-form HTML canvas — each slide stores raw HTML; no element lock-in
• Cascading metadata — set fonts and colors once on the presentation; slides inherit unless they override
• Per-slide ownership — assign a user as owner of specific slides; lock to prevent other editors
• Version history — named snapshots plus automatic checkpoints; restore with one call
• Presenter mode — speaker view with notes, timer, laser pointer; audience follows automatically
• AI generation — sdk.slides.generate({ prompt, theme }) creates a full deck from a prompt

Next steps

• Authoring decks — layout helpers, themes, create-with-content
• SDK API reference — complete method signatures
• Presenter mode — speaker view, navigation, laser, versions