Quick Start
Welcome! This page gets you from zero to your first presentation in a few minutes. We'll go slowly, so don't worry if you've never used a text-based slide tool before.
Tachyonn is a desktop app for building and giving slide presentations. Instead of dragging boxes around with a mouse, you write your slides in a plain-text file — a .tac file — and Tachyonn turns it into a polished deck. No build step, no browser, no internet required.
What a .tac file looks like
Here is a complete, working presentation. Take a moment to read it — most of it will feel familiar if you've ever written Markdown:
===
title: My First Talk
author: Jane Doe
===
# Introduction
## Why text-based slides?
Writing slides as text keeps you focused on the *content*, not the layout.
- Quick to write
- Easy to version with Git
- Looks consistent automatically
## What we'll cover
1. The big idea
2. A quick demo
3. Where to go nextThat's it. There's no hidden setup. Let's unpack what each part does.
The frontmatter (the === block)
The block at the very top, fenced by === lines, is called the frontmatter. It describes the whole presentation: its title, author, colors, and so on. Here we only set a title and an author — Tachyonn fills in sensible defaults for everything else.
A nice bonus: Tachyonn reads that title and author and builds a cover slide for you automatically. You don't have to design it.
The body (everything after the frontmatter)
Below the frontmatter is your content. The rule that drives everything is simple:
- A line starting with one
#creates a section divider — a slide that introduces a new part of your talk. - A line starting with two
##creates a regular content slide. - Everything you write underneath a heading belongs to that slide, until the next heading appears.
So the file above produces, in order:
- An automatic cover slide (from the frontmatter)
- A section slide that says "Introduction"
- A content slide titled "Why text-based slides?" with a bulleted list
- A content slide titled "What we'll cover" with a numbered list
Opening your presentation
Once you've saved your .tac file, there are two ways to open it in Tachyonn:
- Drag and drop the file onto the Tachyonn window, or
- Press Cmd+O (macOS) / Ctrl+O (Windows, Linux) to pick it from a dialog.
The moment it opens, you're presenting.
Moving through your slides
| What you want to do | Press |
|---|---|
| Go forward (next reveal or next slide) | →, Space, or Enter |
| Go back | ← or Backspace |
| Jump to the next section | Shift + → |
| Jump to the previous section | Shift + ← |
| Open presenter mode | Cmd/Ctrl + P |
Tips
The section jumps (Shift + arrows) are a lifesaver in long talks. They skip straight to the next # divider, so you can move between chapters without clicking through every slide in between.
Where to next
You now know enough to build a real deck. When you're ready to go deeper:
- What is Tachyonn? — the philosophy and the ideas behind the tool
- First Steps — a guided tour of the most common building blocks
- Syntax Guide — the complete reference for the
.taclanguage