Write Slides in Markdown

October 8, 2026

Write Slides in Markdown

If you've written a README, kept notes in Obsidian, or put asterisks around a word in Slack to make it bold, you already know how to write a slide in PPTX.ai.

What a slide looks like

Here is a whole slide:

# Why we're moving the stand-up

- Half the team is in Lisbon now
- 9:30 in Boston is 2:30 there
- Afternoon stand-ups keep getting skipped

The preview updates as you type, and nothing changes until you press save.

You can use the Markdown most people already know: headings, paragraphs, bulleted and numbered lists, bold and italic, quotes, tables, code and code blocks, and a --- line to divide things up.

Layouts follow the shape of your Markdown

A slide doesn't have to be a heading and a list. Choose a layout from the Layout menu and write the Markdown it expects:

  • Title and Section break: one # heading, and at most one line under it.
  • Quote: a > quote, then a blank line and who said it.
  • Two columns: a heading, then your content. A --- line marks where the second column starts.
  • Big number: just the number in the heading, then one line saying what it means.
  • Image left, Image right and Full-bleed image: for a slide with a picture the assistant made for it.

A big-number slide:

# 73%

of last quarter's support tickets were password resets

A two-column slide:

# Renting or buying the cameras

**Renting**
- Nothing to pay up front
- Repairs are their problem

---

**Buying**
- Cheaper after 18 months
- We decide when to upgrade

The assistant writes the same Markdown you do

When you ask the assistant for slides, this is what it writes. So when it gets a word wrong, you don't have to ask it to try again. Open the slide and change the word. Editing a slide yourself doesn't use any credits.

If you already have an outline in Markdown, paste it into the studio and ask for slides. Whatever comes back, you can open and edit line by line.

Polls and quizzes go in between

Polls and quizzes sit in the same list as your slides, in the order you'll show them: three slides on the new rota, a poll on which shift people would pick, two more slides, then a short quiz on the rules. Add them by asking ("put a poll after slide three asking which shift people prefer") or with the + Poll and + Quiz buttons.

We wrote a separate post on how polls and quizzes work, including all the question types.

One design for all of it

Markdown only says what each piece of text is: a title, a point, a quote. It says nothing about how it looks. The look comes from the presentation's design, and one design covers every slide, poll and quiz in it.

That means you can change how the whole presentation looks without touching a slide. Describe it to the assistant: "dark navy background, a serif for the headings, orange for anything highlighted," or "like an old railway timetable." It designs the look for this presentation, and the headings, quotes, big numbers, quiz answer buttons and poll result bars all change together.

If you don't ask for anything, you get our house look: bold black type on pale yellow, with orange accents.

The same slide on every screen

Every slide is laid out on the same 16:9 canvas and then scaled to fit whatever is showing it. The preview in the editor is what appears on the projector and on a laptop in the audience. On a phone, polls and quizzes switch to a layout made for tapping.

Because the canvas is fixed, a slide that's too full is too full everywhere. The assistant checks its slides after writing them, and shortens or splits any that run over instead of making the text smaller. When you write your own, a title and about five short points, or a title and a short paragraph, is about as much as a slide holds.

What we left out on purpose

Your slides appear on other people's phones, so some parts of Markdown are switched off:

  • Links show as plain text. Nobody can tap one and leave your talk by accident. If you want people to visit a page, write the address out.
  • Markdown images don't appear. To put a picture on a slide, ask the assistant to make one. The image layouts then arrange it next to or behind your text.
  • HTML is ignored. Only the Markdown is shown.

Speaker notes aren't part of a slide's Markdown either. They have their own box under the slide text, and only you see them while you present. Everything in the slide text goes to your audience's phones, so keep reminders to yourself in the notes.

Try it

Open the studio, add a slide, and press Edit. If you've used Markdown before, you already know the rest.