mdp: A command-line markdown presentation tool

mdp is best when the terminal is the room

Search for mdp and you usually find a very specific promise: write a Markdown file, open a terminal, and present without leaving the command line. That is the appeal. There is no deck template to pick, no export dialog, and no big application window trying to manage your story for you. If you already live in a terminal, mdp feels almost obvious.

The tool reads a Markdown document and turns it into slides you can move through from the keyboard. For developer meetups, internal engineering demos, classroom notes, or a quick talk in a tmux session, that can be enough. You get headings, bullet points, code blocks, and a rhythm that matches how technical people already write notes.

That narrowness is a strength. mdp does not try to become PowerPoint. It does not pretend that every presentation needs animations, brand controls, charts, speaker collaboration, or a handoff workflow. For a solo presenter who wants speed and control, a command-line based markdown presentation tool is refreshing because it removes decisions instead of adding them.

But the same narrowness creates the boundary. The terminal is a great place to write and present to a technical room. It is a poor place to share a deck with a client, send a strategy memo to a leadership team, or let someone skim the story later on a phone. Once the presentation leaves the room, the format starts to matter as much as the source.

Markdown makes authoring fast, but delivery still decides the outcome

Markdown is popular for presentations because it keeps the first draft honest. You start with the argument, not with the slide chrome. A heading becomes a slide. A list becomes the shape of the point. Code stays readable. This is why tools like mdp have lasted: they protect the writer from spending the first hour nudging boxes around.

The tradeoff is that Markdown is not the whole job. Presentations have two lives. The first is authoring, where plain text is wonderful. The second is delivery, where people need to read, present, comment, reuse, and forward the work. mdp handles the first life well and the live terminal version decently. It does not try to solve the afterlife of the deck.

That afterlife is where many teams lose time. Someone asks for the slides after the meeting. Someone else opens the file on a laptop without the right fonts. A stakeholder wants to change one sentence but does not want to touch Markdown. A manager wants to present the same material from a browser in a conference room. The content is done, but the format keeps creating chores.

A good presentation workflow should not force a choice between clean source and easy sharing. Markdown is a good beginning, not always a good final destination. The best setup keeps the source simple while giving the audience a link they can open anywhere.

mdp compares well with other text-first tools, but each has a different bias

mdp is not alone. Marp is strong when you want Markdown slides that can become HTML, PDF, or PowerPoint files. Slidev is strong for developers who want a richer web based slide system with components, themes, and interactive examples. Deckset, on macOS, is loved because it makes Markdown slides look good with very little fuss. Pandoc can generate many formats and remains a serious choice for people who want document conversion power.

Those tools deserve credit. Marp is practical and widely understood. Slidev is flexible for technical demos. Deckset is polished for writers who want to stay in Markdown. Pandoc is dependable when output formats matter. mdp wins only in a smaller category: it is direct, terminal native, and easy to understand. If you need slides in a shell, that simplicity is hard to beat.

The difference is that most of these tools still orbit files. You write a source file, generate or open an output file, then send that file or store it somewhere. That is fine for many teams. It is also the old office habit wearing new clothes. The source may be Markdown, but the final handoff still feels like attachment management.

Plain takes a different side of the problem. The output is a web page first. You can start with AI drafted structure, keep a Markdown source, edit by clicking on the page, present in the browser, and share the result as a link. If someone still needs a .pptx, export is there as a fallback, not the center of the workflow.

A link is often more useful than a presentation file

The biggest practical difference between mdp and Plain is not whether both can begin from Markdown. It is what the audience receives. With mdp, the natural output is a terminal presentation. With many other markdown presentation tools, the output is usually a file. With Plain, the output is a web page that you share as a link.

That sounds like a small difference until you watch how work actually moves. A link opens on a phone, tablet, laptop, or conference room computer without asking anyone to install your tool. It can be forwarded without creating version confusion. It can be updated after you send it. It can live in chat, docs, email, or a calendar invite. The presentation becomes a place instead of an attachment.

This is especially useful for work that sits between a deck and a document. Many modern presentations are not stage performances. They are strategy notes, launch plans, research summaries, sales leave-behinds, product briefs, investor updates, and team updates. People skim them before a meeting, present them during the meeting, and revisit them afterward. A browser page fits that pattern better than a file that needs to be downloaded and reopened.

mdp remains a great fit when the audience is watching you in the terminal and the deck does not need to travel far. Plain is a better fit when the work needs to survive beyond the live talk. That is not a knock on mdp. It is a different job.

Click-to-edit matters when more people touch the deck

Markdown is friendly to writers and developers, but not everyone wants to edit source. This becomes obvious the first time a teammate says, "Can I just change this headline?" For a command-line based markdown presentation tool, the honest answer is usually yes, if you are comfortable editing the file and running the presentation again.

Plain keeps Markdown in the workflow but does not make it the only door. You can edit the source when that is faster. You can also click an element on the page and change it directly. That matters for teams where the person with the best feedback is not the person who wants to open a text editor.

There is also a quality benefit. AI can draft the structure, but a human still needs to tighten the story. The fastest way to do that is often visual: move a section, rewrite a card, shorten a title, fix a chart label, or adjust the order while looking at the actual page. Markdown alone can hide pacing problems until you render the slides. A clickable page makes the draft easier to judge.

This is where Plain feels closer to how people already work in PowerPoint, Word, and Excel, without forcing the old file based ending. You still get deck, doc, and sheet shaped work. You just send a web page instead of asking everyone to pass around a file.

Choose mdp for terminal talks and Plain for shareable office work

If you are giving a short technical talk, teaching from a terminal, or presenting notes to an audience that appreciates the command line, mdp is a good choice. It is small, focused, and honest about what it does. You can keep the whole talk in one Markdown file and avoid the overhead of a heavier presentation app.

If the presentation needs design polish, easy edits, browser presenting, and a clean share link, Plain is the better fit. It does not ask you to abandon Markdown. It uses Markdown as a source you can inspect and edit, while also giving you the visual editing and web delivery that non-terminal audiences expect.

The practical rule is simple: use mdp when the terminal is part of the experience. Use Plain when the result needs to be read, presented, revised, and shared like modern office work. A deck as a link is easier to send, easier to reopen, and easier to keep current than another exported file.

That is the larger shift. Presentations, documents, and spreadsheets do not have to end as attachments. In the AI era, the draft can start fast, the editing can stay human, and the final object can be a page anyone can open. mdp proves the value of simple Markdown authoring. Plain carries that simplicity into the way work is shared.