How this works

Keep the server current

Deck Hub tells your agent when a newer server is available, and refuses versions older than the supported minimum with the exact command to run. When you see either message:

aim mcp update deckhub-mcp

Then restart your agent. Nothing else changes; your sign-in and decks are untouched.

No Toolbox? Connect via GitLab instead

If aim isn't available (or you prefer a config-file setup), the same server runs straight from its GitLab repo via uvx. Add this to your client's MCP config (.mcp.json, ~/.claude.json, Kiro's mcp.json, …):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "deckhub": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "--refresh",
        "--from",
        "git+ssh://git@ssh.gitlab.aws.dev/ghast/presentations-mcp.git",
        "deckhub-mcp"
      ]
    }
  }
}

--refresh matters: it re-checks GitLab for the latest version on every server start (falling back to the cached copy offline). Without it, uvx pins the first version it ever fetched and you'll silently miss new tools and fixes. Requires uv and a valid Midway session (mwinit).

Find the right deck

• Use All, Mine, Shared by me, and Shared with me to narrow the library. Selecting a tag adds a tag filter.
• Press ⌘K on macOS or Ctrl K elsewhere to search titles, slide text, tags, and speaker notes by wording or meaning. Results include a preview of the matching slide and open directly at that slide.
• Switch between two-column cards, three-column cards and a compact list with the view control on the toolbar. Your choice is remembered.

Stay in the loop

• The bell next to your avatar is your inbox: access requests on your decks (with an Approve button), grants you receive, co-present invites, finished imports and bulk updates, review findings and assistant suggestions. Read items clear after 24 hours.
• Your avatar menu holds What's new (the features currently being announced), the full Changelog in reverse date order, and your preferences: Email notifications for sharing, Show Public section, and Daily tips.
• With Daily tips on, a small Did you know? card shows one feature on your first visit each day. Dismiss it, follow its link, or turn tips off from the card itself.

Read status at a glance

A coloured rail shows a deck shared by you or with you. If the whole section is shared, the section background carries that status instead of repeating a rail on every deck. A slide issues pill reports publish-time checks; select it to see the affected slides and details.

People currently viewing or presenting a deck appear as presence indicators. Gallery content also refreshes when another user publishes a change, without repeatedly reloading every slide preview.

Give the agent useful context

• Type # followed by a deck name and choose a suggestion. The selected deck is attached to the request as #owner/slug. You can also ask the agent to search for a deck that is not in the current list.
• Use the paperclip to attach PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP, PDF, text, or Markdown files, or paste a screenshot or image straight into the message box.
• Use the microphone in a supported browser to dictate in UK English. The message sends automatically after a short pause, or select the microphone again to stop without sending.

Work across several conversations

Select + for a fresh agent session. Tabs are named automatically and keep their own transcript, draft message, and agent session. Switch tabs to return to earlier work. Drag the panel's left edge to resize it.

Review slides without leaving chat

Click a slide shown by the agent to open it in the large presentation viewer beside the chat. Use the arrow controls to move through the deck, refresh it, or open it in a separate tab. The agent receives the deck and slide currently open with your next message.

When the agent proposes a replacement or new slide, it appears in the Suggestions tray above the message box. Select Preview, then switch between Original and Suggested in the viewer. Select Apply to publish it or Discard to remove it. Nothing is published until you approve it. Suggestions belong to the chat that created them and stay available for 24 hours — reopen the chat to pick them up again; after that they expire and you can ask the agent for a fresh one.

Web requests you did not ask for wait for you

The assistant can search the web and read pages while researching slide content. Pages it found through search, or that you linked in your own message, are read straight away. If it composes an address itself and Deck Hub cannot vouch for it, the assistant pauses and shows an amber Check this web request card with the full address and why it was flagged.

Nothing is fetched until you choose Approve. Deny is the default: sending another message denies the request too, and the assistant carries on without that page. This guards against a shared deck or web page smuggling instructions that would send your content somewhere in a link.

AWS names are checked for you

Every publish checks the AWS offering names in your slides and speaker notes against the approved catalogue. Deprecated names, do-not-use names, missing prefixes and wrong capitalisation come back with the approved replacement in the publish response and as a slide issues pill on the card. Review Studio has a Check AWS names pass for the whole deck, and the assistant will not write a slide using a name the catalogue rejects. Ask it whether a name is right before you use it.

Review Studio — work a full review as a queue

For a whole-deck review, ask the assistant to review this deck (or open Review Studio from the deck menu). Every finding lands against its slide in a persisted queue: the flagged slide shows large with a REVIEW or DROP stamp, the reasoning sits alongside, and you decide each one — A accepts, R keeps as is, C comments, arrows move through the queue.

Accepting a finding doesn't change the deck — ask the assistant to fix it, and after the edit the finding waits for your verification. A suggested drop records the decision only; deleting the slide stays a separate, confirmed action. If a slide changes before you decide, its finding is marked stale rather than applied to the wrong content. Your queue survives edits, reorders and reloads, and updates live while agents add findings.

Adapt the audience screen to the room

Presenter view includes Light, Dark, and Contrast controls for the live audience deck. The change is immediate, does not reload the deck or reset media and effects, and stays synchronised across a shared presenter session. Press d in presenter view to cycle through the three modes quickly.

Practise a presentation

Open a hosted deck in Presenter view, select Practice, and allow microphone access. Deck Hub follows slide changes while it transcribes your delivery. Use Mute when needed and Stop to finish.

The report covers clarity, pace, energy, filler words, structure, and professionalism, plus duration, word count, words per minute, strengths, improvements, grammar, and progress against the previous run.

Optional slides — detours for deep dives

A deck can carry slides that sit outside the normal flow: pressing next or previous skips straight over them. They are reached through a marked element on another slide — a "Deep dive" pill, a stat, an image — and once you are on the detour, next or previous returns you to exactly the slide you came from. Detours can nest.

Use them for the material you only bring out if the room asks. In presenter view the filmstrip shows detours as a dashed branch hanging under the slide that links to them, like a branch in a git graph — click a branch thumbnail to take the detour directly. Optional slides still appear in the PDF export.

Present safely while others edit

A publish by another user does not replace the deck in the middle of your presentation. Presenter view shows This deck was updated by someone else; select Reload when you are ready to adopt the new version. Note changes sync live unless you have an unsaved local edit, in which case Deck Hub asks before replacing it.

Start a session

Open Presenter view on your deck and select Share control. Your paired audience tab becomes the shared screen automatically. The session rail shows a copyable join link, a six-character code you can read out across the room, and everyone connected.

Invite co-presenters

Three ways in, all requiring viewer access to the deck:

• By alias — type an alias in the session rail and press Enter. They get a styled email with a personal join link and skip the waiting room entirely.
• By link — anyone opening the copied link waits until you admit them from the rail.
• By code — same as the link, for when reading six characters aloud is easier. Codes expire after 15 minutes.

During the session

Every admitted presenter gets the full console — next-slide preview, filmstrip, notes, and a shared elapsed timer, so everyone agrees how far into the talk you are. Next, Previous, and the filmstrip all drive the shared screen; after a remote move the rail briefly shows Moved by <alias>. Staged reveals and carousels stay perfectly in sync.

The host can invite more people or remove someone at any point from the rail. Removal takes effect immediately. The deck itself is snapshotted for the session — a publish mid-talk never changes what the audience sees.

If something goes wrong

Walking to the machine driving the screen and pressing an arrow key always works — the session follows along. If the audience screen closes, the session pauses (rather than guessing a new screen) until you attach one. If your connection drops, reconnect and you resume where the session actually is.

Type floors

Set a real minimum with clamp(min, preferred, max), never a bare vw/vh value with no floor. Keep supporting text at or above 20px at the 1920×1080 design size — a size that looks slightly large on a monitor is usually just readable from the back of a room. Move detail into speaker notes rather than shrinking text to fit it on the slide.

One message per slide

Prefer fewer, larger elements to many small cards. If two ideas remain on one slide, split it into two.

Headline as conclusion

Make the headline state what the evidence proves, not merely the topic — "The app token authenticates the caller; the user token delegates Graph access", not "Token architecture". A reader should get the point from the headline alone, before looking at the supporting visual.

Share one deck

Open the deck's ⋯ menu and select Share, or select its shared-status rail. Add a user alias, group name, or everyone grant, choose viewer or editor, and remove grants from the same modal.

Share a whole section

Select Share beside the section heading. The grant applies to every deck currently in that section and to decks moved there later. Recipients see a tinted section background instead of a repeated sharing rail on each card. Renaming the section keeps its grants; deleting a shared section warns that those grants will be removed.

Your Public section

Everyone has a Public section. Move a deck into it and any signed-in colleague can view it at /p/<your alias>/public, with no grants to manage. It stays hidden on your own gallery while it is empty; turn on Show Public section in the avatar menu to see it early. Other people's public decks never appear in your gallery; you reach them through their public page or by asking your agent.

Log one

Tell the assistant, or your own agent, what is broken or missing. It gathers the details (steps, expected and actual behaviour, the exact error text; or the problem, the outcome you want and why it matters), shows you exactly what will be stored, and nothing is submitted until you confirm. Before logging, it checks whether the same thing already exists and offers a vote instead.

Follow it

Open a report to see its comments and triage history. Vote for what matters to you (one vote per person), comment with more detail, and edit your own report's wording. Show closed reveals resolved, closed and duplicate reports.