Deckcraft

Audit basis: this checkout is tag v0.14.1, commit ee39ff67816d0039143ec7c98ea604cefe0cd2e5 (git rev-parse HEAD in the pinned clone; the v0.13.1 ref was fetched for id diffs). The installed /Applications/DeckCraft.app matches this tag (CFBundleIdentifier ai.storyteller.deckcraft, binary deckcraft 0.14.1). Verify against your installed version (/Applications/DeckCraft.app/Contents/MacOS/DeckCraft --version) — the ArtCraft Launcher auto-updates, and command ids, formats and export options move between releases.

v0.13.1 → v0.14.1 adds slide.actions (read-only inspection of a slide's action settings, PR #1574 — 328 → 329 engine commands, the inspect family 4 → 5) and changes no other id. MCP insert_chart takes optional x/y/w/h (#1583; tool set unchanged at 25). animation.add/animation.set take the points of a custom motion path (#1584). Behaviour: slideshow click targets follow animated shapes (#1521); print previews use private directories (#1519); transition commands reject an invalid index instead of acting on the selection (#1577); format.highlight rejects an invalid colour instead of clearing it (#1587); bullet Follow Text settings are preserved (#1589); PPTX keeps inset line alignment (#1590) and gradient flip mode (#1591); custom geometry parses uppercase exponents (#1594); layout/master placeholder formatting reaches slides (#1490); codec configuration records reject picture slices (#1514); Ogg damage recovery is bounded (#1582); explicit line miter limits are preserved (#1585); text no longer breaks a word after ?, !, } or +, so URLs wrap as in PowerPoint (#924). Deep detail — every command family, shortcut, control method, MCP tool, format option and runtime path — is in references/commands-and-formats.md.

Overview

DeckCraft is a clean-room, open-source (MIT OR Apache-2.0), pure-Rust presentation application targeting Microsoft PowerPoint for Mac parity — and better speed, openness and agent control (README.md; AGENTS.md; Cargo.toml). It builds decks with masters, eleven layouts, eight original themes, shapes, text, tables, charts, SmartArt, audio and video; presents them full screen or in a window with transitions and animations; and exchanges PowerPoint .pptx plus its own .deckcraft (README.md §"What works today"). It is alpha: the parity docs still claim 84% feature breadth (P0 92%, P1 82%, P2 55%) and ~55% ready for real work, both by the project's own measurement (ROADMAP.md; docs/target-app-parity.md; docs/parity-checklist.md). The workspace is 24 crates plus three apps (apps/deckcraft, apps/deckcraft-cli, apps/deckcraft-web) on Rust edition 2024 (Cargo.toml; docs/architecture.md). The UI runs on egui 0.37 with craft-ui's shared widgets (ComboBox everywhere). Source: GitHub storytold/deckcraft.

v0.13.0–0.13.1 is a fix/UX wave with no registry change (328 command ids, 51 UI commands, 25 MCP tools, 12 CLI subcommands, 26 control methods — all re-counted unchanged): Format ▸ Fill gains a Slide background fill (shapes and text boxes only, groups keep their fill), Format Shape Effects shows drawn Shadow/Glow/Soft-Edges preset tiles and a shadow Size slider, Darken and Desaturate use PowerPoint's preset ids/HSL shift and 14 effects take its default durations, the Add Animation menu scrolls, Duplicate names copies counting group members, Slide Show ▸ Set Up Slide Show can keep the mouse cursor visible, the Presenter View's next-slide preview renders off the UI thread, going back reverses the left slide's transition, PDF export gives transparent pixels the backdrop colour, spell check skips words over 100 characters and suggests corrections for all-caps words, variable fonts' named instances answer to their Windows family names, charts honour tickLblPos: none, and several commands (file.export, file.render, slide.colorAt, animation.clear, design.applyIdea/ideas, transition commands) now reject an invalid slide index instead of silently acting on the selection. MCP/CLI confinement: --automation-read-root / --automation-write-root may now be repeated (multiple roots each); a 16 MiB request-frame cap was added to the MCP server.

Everything user-visible is a command with an id, and Session::execute is the single dispatch path shared by the ribbon, keyboard, CLI, control channel and MCP (crates/engine/src/lib.rs; crates/engine/src/cmd/).

Capabilities (verified)

Automation surface at a glance

Every count was recomputed from this tag's code on 2026-11-02, never copied: commands from the cmd!( blocks in crates/engine/src/cmd/ (the full 329 total; diffed against a fetched v0.13.1 ref — exactly one new id, slide.actions), control methods from the dispatch arms in crates/ui-egui/src/control.rs (zero diff files), MCP tools from crates/mcp/src/tools.rs (25; only insert_chart's parameter schema changed), UI commands from crates/ui-egui/src/lib.rs UI_COMMANDS (51, zero diff files), CLI from apps/deckcraft-cli/src/help.rs (12, zero diff files). Transitions/animations/themes/layouts/presets/charts/SmartArt/starters/icons/warps carried from the earlier audits — this wave changed none of them (the wave is fixes, one query command, and MCP/animation parameter extensions).

What changed since v0.11.1 (326 commands): format.languageAll sets the proofing language for the whole presentation (PR #1118) and slide.selectRange backs Ctrl+Shift+click range selection in the Slides panel and the slide sorter (PR #1107). Feature work this line: Reuse Slides now lets you choose which slides of the other file to insert (PR #1109); Preferences chooses inches or centimetres for the Format pane, the ribbon's size boxes, the Slide Size dialog and the ruler (PR #1336); Ctrl+wheel zooms the slide around the pointer in Show (PR #1331); RTF outline round-trip fixes (Word RTF outlines skip list bullets and keep each item's indent, non-breaking hyphens survive, saving keeps every paragraph of a slide title, signed hex escapes ignored); PDF export keeps only web and mail links and reuses equal slide backdrops (faster export); a video with an unsupported codec now says only its audio plays; speech-bubble wedge and Notched Right arrow geometry match presetShapeDefinitions; pasted shapes get the next automatic name; media decoders are hardened against resource amplification. Startup update prompt with direct self-updating (craft-update); Windows installs per-user by default. No command, MCP tool, control method, CLI subcommand, transition, animation or theme was removed.

The MCP surface is 25 tools: list_commands, run_command, batch, new_presentation, open_presentation, save_presentation, export, inspect_document, inspect_slide, render_slide, add_slide, go_to_slide, add_shape, add_text_box, set_text, insert_picture, insert_table, insert_chart, select, pointer, select_tool, key, type_text, screenshot and call_app (the last two connected-mode only; full table in references/commands-and-formats.md).

Deck structure and design

• Slides, masters and layouts. Eleven standard layouts plus Custom (LayoutType, crates/model/src/lib.rs). Slide/notes/handout masters, placeholder inheritance, sections, notes, comments, headers/footers, custom shows and slide sizes are modelled.
• Themes. Eight original themes — DeckCraft, Harbor, Ember, Meadow, Nocturne, Paper, Coral Reef, Slate — with colour, font and effect schemes and four colour variants. Design ▸ Browse for Themes imports .thmx, .pptx or .potx.
• Starter decks. Six originals — Briefing, Lesson, Pitch, Field Notes, Quarterly, Evening Talk — via file.new {template} / file.templates.
• Shapes. 183 preset shape/connector generators in 9 gallery categories, with adjust handles, glued connectors, freeform/curve/scribble, ink-to-shape, merge operations, gradient/picture/pattern fills, dashes, arrowheads, shadows, glow, soft edges and reflections; speech-bubble wedge mirrors with its tip and Arrow: Notched Right cuts its notch as deep as presetShapeDefinitions give (this line's geometry fixes).
• 3-D. Format Shape ▸ 3-D Format/Rotation: 28 camera presets offered (62 known), 12 bevels, 12 materials, 15 light rigs, X/Y/Z rotation, depth and contour; a:scene3d/a:sp3d stay as raw XML and round-trip. Rendering is approximate — see limitations.
• Text. In-place editing with DrawingML run/paragraph properties, bullets and numbering, columns (1–16), autofit, vertical and RTL text, fields, hyperlinks, tab stops, line spacing, 40 WordArt warps and AutoFormat/Smart Quotes.
• Tables. Styled tables with cell merges (diagonal borders included), row/column insert, delete and distribute, widths/heights, borders, cell fill/margins/alignment, drag- or Shift+arrow range selection, draw/erase line; row/column commands now reject invalid indexes.

Content

• Pictures. PNG, JPEG, GIF (animated, inside groups too), WebP, BMP, TIFF decode; EMF/WMF draw through deckcraft-metafile, including EMF+-only files. Crop, brightness/contrast, duotone, alpha, artistic effects, compress and Set Transparent Colour are modelled; a picture's fill now shows behind its transparent pixels.
• Charts. 28 types including the seven Office-2016 chartEx types, plus radar, stock, region map and combo; chart text colour, palette, gridlines, data labels, bin options and six trendline kinds with forecast and equation/R² (trendline fit uses a scale-relative degeneracy check now). An unchanged chart keeps its embedded workbook; pattern fills read and write (a:pattFill).
• SmartArt. A graphic is a group whose outline is edited in a Text Pane; 45 layouts, 9 styles, 17 colour sets, Add/Promote/Demote/Remove, layout switching, picture fill, convert to/from text or shapes; written to .pptx as a real diagram.
• Media. Audio: MP3, AAC/M4A, ALAC, WAV, AIFF, CAF, FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, Opus. Video: H.264, HEVC, VP9 and AV1 in MP4/MOV and WebM/Matroska, decoded in software by the repo's own codec crates (H.264 inverse transforms now clamp coefficients to the spec range). Trim, fades, volume, poster frame and show-media-controls are modelled.
• Other insertables. 70 Lucide 1.56.0 stroke icons as custom shapes (insert.icon), WordArt, symbols, date/time fields (13 formats), slide numbers, photo albums (insert and edit), Zoom links, and an Equation dialog that inserts pretty-printed text, not OMML.

Presenting

• 48 transitions plus "None" (49 rows), including Morph with objects/words/characters options; an invalid transition.timing after no longer kills auto-advance.
• Animations. 107 picker entries (24 entrance, 17 emphasis, 23 exit, 40 motion-path including Custom Path, 3 media controls); start modes, by-paragraph builds, click triggers, repeat, auto-reverse and bounce end; animation remove/move/timing/options reject invalid indexes.
• Slide show. Full-screen show or browsed (in a window), presenter view in a second window, pen and laser pointer, black/white screens, See All Slides, zoom (Ctrl+wheel around the pointer), hyperlinks/actions, custom shows, kiosk looping, rehearse timings and media playback (show.setup {type: speaker|browsed|kiosk}).
• Views. Normal, Outline, Slide Sorter, Notes Page and Reading; slide/notes/handout master views; Animation Pane with Play From.

Files

• Native .deckcraft: a zip with a stored mimetype, presentation.json, media/<id> and chart-parts/<index> entries; readers ignore unknown fields, and legacy .slidecraft files still open. Load budgets: 2 GiB per entry, 4 GiB total media + chart sidecars, 100 000 items.
• PowerPoint .pptx: read and write; .potx and .ppsx are written with their own main content types. Unknown parts are kept where the model does not understand them. Embedded fonts are read and written; MicroType Express subsets are kept but not drawn. OPC relationship targets with backslash separators now resolve; a + in target percent-decoding is rejected.
• Outlines: plain text and Markdown (headings become slides) and .rtf — PowerPoint's Outline/RTF save type — imported by content sniffing and by extension, and exported with bold/italic/underline and outline levels; the round-trip fixes above.
• PDF: slides, notes pages or handouts (1/2/3/4/6/9), Letter/A4/Legal/A3, portrait/landscape, hidden-slide and slide-range options, selectable invisible text layer, web and mail links only, bookmarks; slide artwork is a raster image, at most 64M pixels per slide.
• Images and GIF: PNG/JPEG per slide (one, slide, or all; transparentBackground; DPI = scale × 72) and an animated GIF of the deck (one frame per slide, 256-colour palette, 16–3840 px wide, 0.1–600 s per slide, loop or play once, slide range incl. "1-3,5", hidden slides skipped, ≤500 frames / ≤200M pixels).
• AutoRecover: unsaved presentations are written to a recovery folder and reopened at the next start; saving or closing removes the entry.

Platforms

• macOS universal app, signed, notarized and stapled; Windows x64/arm64/x86 (per-user install by default now; a Windows shortcut keeps its icon after an update), Linux (AppImage, Flatpak, deb, rpm, tarball; riscv64 tarball), FreeBSD and a static WebAssembly site.
• Rendering is CPU-side through vello_cpu; the UI is egui 0.37/eframe. The web build uses WebGPU with a WebGL2 fallback (?webgl), starts blank or in show with ?blank/?show, downloads instead of saving, has no audio output, no TCP control channel and no persisted preferences.

Known limitations and not-implemented

File exchange and PowerPoint fidelity

• No external deck corpus. Every PPTX test uses decks this repo authors; fidelity on real corporate decks, templates, fonts and chartex is mostly unmeasured, and "opens in PowerPoint without repair" is a docs claim, not independently verified here.
• Known PPTX round-trip losses: media playback options and animation rewind are not written back (#74, #77); a combo chart's secondary value axis is read but not written when the chart is rebuilt; editing a chart's data drops its embedded workbook (an unchanged chart keeps it); imported SmartArt is redrawn with DeckCraft's simpler layouts; relationship-bearing SmartArt/OLE kept only as XML loses drawing and data parts (#203).
• Unsupported input: legacy .ppt/.pot/.pps, OpenDocument .odp and .pptm/.potm/.ppsm are not read (macros are neither preserved nor run); password-protected decks fail with a clear error and there is no password protection on save.
• A Finder-open .ppsx still does not start its show. Only the command-line path checks for .ppsx; the file-association path documented in docs/file-format-parity.md is unverified for the Finder route.
• Internal docs still lag the code. docs/control-protocol.md says a 16 MiB request line (code: 256 MiB); docs/animation-parity.md says 14 exit effects (code: 23); docs/gaps.md understates SmartArt; docs/architecture.md says 320 commands (code: 329). Trust the code and deckcraft-cli commands/describe.

Pictures and media

• SVG is not rendered. insert.picture accepts image/svg+xml, but no decoder draws it, so an inserted SVG shows nothing and a PPTX that stores a PNG fallback beside its SVG shows that fallback.
• HEIC is not supported, WMA is recognised and probed but not decoded, WMV is not playable, and online video embeds are not supported. EMF/WMF render inside decks but are not sniffed by insert.picture.
• Web build is silent and stateless: no audio output, no TCP control channel, no persisted preferences.

Output

• PDF artwork is rasterized. Each slide is placed as a print-DPI image (capped at 64M pixels per slide raster) under an invisible real-text layer; text is selectable/searchable but the artwork is not vector.
• No native print dialog. File ▸ Print (Cmd+P) builds a PDF in the temp folder and opens it in the system viewer.
• No MP4/MOV export. Only the animated GIF exists: one static frame per slide, no transitions or build animations.

Platform and UI

• No native macOS menu bar. menus::menu_tree() exists but nothing installs it; use the ribbon, the command palette (Cmd+Shift+P) or commands.
• Presenter view is a second window but is not assigned to the second display.
• CPU rasterization and software video decode; no GPU slide rendering or hardware decode. English-only UI, no string catalogue. Pen pressure works, tilt does not.

Feature depth

• Charts are partial: chart-element editing and some chartex behaviour are thinner than PowerPoint's.
• Animations are partial: 64 non-path effects of roughly 190 in PowerPoint.
• SmartArt is shallow: 45 simple layouts against PowerPoint's ~200, no picture layouts or 3-D styles.
• No recording: the Record tab's Record button is disabled ("Recording narration needs audio capture").
• Equations are not OMML: the Equation dialog inserts pretty-printed text; OMML is neither read nor written.
• No AI/cloud features (Copilot/Designer/Speaker Coach/live captions); only offline Design Ideas arrangements. No add-ins or VBA by policy; MCP/CLI is the automation alternative.

Automation and data-safety behaviours to know

• file.close closes a dirty document without prompting. The UI's Close (app.closePresentation, Cmd+W) prompts; the raw engine command does not. Do not call file.close on unsaved work.
• app.quit over the control channel quits without asking. {"save": true} saves every presentation first, but an untitled document still opens a Save dialog, so save explicit paths before quitting.
• file.save/file.saveAs without a path (and no stored path) ask the UI and return {"needsPath": true}, writing nothing in headless use — always pass path.
• Never use file.save/run --save for .png/.jpg. save_bytes handles pptx|potx|ppsx, outline txt, rtf, pdf and gif, and falls back to native .deckcraft zip bytes for anything else. Use file.export/--export/convert. MCP save_presentation and control-channel app.save inherit the trap.
• run stops at the first failing command and saves nothing.
• Reads are bounded and saves follow links: every path read needs a regular file of at most 2 GiB, and a save canonicalizes the target (so it writes through a symlink) and preserves the existing file's permissions.
• The control channel has no authentication. It binds loopback only; do not expose or port-forward it.

How to operate

Check what is installed

shCopy code
/Applications/DeckCraft.app/Contents/MacOS/DeckCraft --version   # prints: deckcraft 0.12.0
command -v deckcraft-cli                                         # headless CLI: a separate download

The .app bundle contains no deckcraft-cli. The CLI ships as the separate signed/notarized release asset deckcraft-cli-<ver>-macos-universal.zip; download/unzip it, build it with cargo build --release -p deckcraft-cli, or automate through the control channel instead.

Launch

shCopy code
open -a DeckCraft                          # normal GUI
open -a DeckCraft --args --sample          # sample deck
open -a DeckCraft talk.pptx                # open a file
/Applications/DeckCraft.app/Contents/MacOS/DeckCraft --control 7990 --sample

GUI flags: --control PORT, --sample, --show, --help, --version, and file paths. The port can also come from DECKCRAFT_CONTROL_PORT. The desktop parser is hand-rolled: an unknown argument is treated as a file path, so a mistyped flag shows up as a failed open, not a usage error.

CLI

deckcraft-cli is the most reliable automation surface; it needs no window.

Examples:

shCopy code
deckcraft-cli commands format.
deckcraft-cli describe shape.insert
deckcraft-cli run --cmd 'slide.new={"layout":"titleOnly","title":"Q3 results"}' \
  --cmd 'shape.insert={"preset":"roundRect","rect":[80,160,320,120],"text":"Revenue"}' \
  --save q3.deckcraft
deckcraft-cli render q3.deckcraft --all --scale 1 out/
deckcraft-cli convert q3.deckcraft q3.pdf
deckcraft-cli run --in q3.deckcraft --export q3.rtf

--print prints each command's answer; it is not a printer flag. convert gives no PDF-layout options and only the first slide for PNG/JPEG; use run --export or file.export for notes/handouts and all slides.

Conventions that prevent most automation bugs

• Coordinates are points on a 960×540 (16:9) slide unless the deck says otherwise; a rect is [x, y, width, height].
• Slide indices are 0-based; render --all names files from 1 (slide-01.png), while file.export all names stem1.png, stem2.png.
• Shape ids are looked up on the current slide only; slide.go {index} changes the current slide; slide.new inserts after it and selects the new slide (pass at for an index).
• Commands that add a shape select it; format.* acts on the selection, while many shape commands take ids directly — ids entries that don't resolve are now an error, not a silent fall back to the selection.
• Text bodies use \n for a new paragraph and a leading tab per level for bullets.
• Every index parameter is strict: a negative or fractional index/from/at is an error; a valid index past the last slide is also an error; review.spellingChange rejects an overflowing start; master.deleteLayout/renameLayout reject invalid layout indexes; animation remove/move/timing/options reject invalid indexes; table row/column commands reject invalid row/col.

Documents, open/save/export

• One process can hold several presentations; file.new/file.open add documents, window.next cycles the active one, and view.newWindow opens a second, non-editing window on the same deck.
• Open: file.open {path} — native .deckcraft, .pptx/.potx/.ppsx, and .txt/.md/.rtf outlines (RTF by content sniffing, not only extension). Open is lenient for PPTX: unknown parts skipped/kept, unreadable slides reported in lostSlides, damaged files open as a repaired copy, and media lengths/sizes are filled in from headers.
• Save: file.save {path, format?: deckcraft|pptx} / file.saveAs {path, format?} / file.saveTemplate {path}; the format follows the extension unless format is given. For .png/.jpg, use file.export. Writes go to a unique .saving sibling renamed over the target, so a failed save never truncates the old file.
• Export: file.export {path, format?, ...}. PNG/JPEG: slide?/all?/scale?/transparentBackground?; PDF: layout, perPage, paper, orientation, dpi, slides, includeHidden, textLayer, frame; GIF: width, secondsPerSlide, loop, slides, includeHidden; outline: txt/outline/rtf. All requested image indices are validated before any file is written.
• Native format as source of truth: keep the .deckcraft master and treat .pptx as an exchange copy. Native save is lossless for DeckCraft's model (chart payloads included); PPTX has the known losses above.

Drive a running app

Start deckcraft --control 7990, then either deckcraft-cli app … or raw JSON lines:

shCopy code
deckcraft-cli app --port 7990 --method ui.screenshot '{"path":"shot.png"}'
deckcraft-cli app --port 7990 shape.insert '{"preset":"star5","rect":[100,100,200,200]}'

jsonCopy code
{"id":1,"method":"engine.execute","params":{"command":"shape.insert","params":{"preset":"star5","rect":[100,100,200,200]}}}
{"id":2,"method":"ui.screenshot","params":{"path":"shot.png"}}

Use ui.inspect first to learn window/canvas/slide rects, the active tool, dialogs and documents; ui.pointer takes slide points, ui.click/ui.drag take screen points. The MCP equivalent is deckcraft-cli mcp --connect 7990. For headless MCP:

jsonCopy code
{"mcpServers":{"deckcraft":{"command":"deckcraft-cli",
  "args":["mcp","--automation-read-root","work/deck","--automation-write-root","work/deck/out"]}}}

Paths outside the roots are refused with ordinary tool errors; a root left out grants none of its access, --flag=DIR works, each flag may be repeated (multiple roots per kind) since v0.13.0, and roots cannot be combined with --connect.

Environment and logs

• Settings/logs: ~/Library/Application Support/DeckCraft/ (ui.json, prefs.json, logs/deckcraft.log, rotated, capped at 16 MiB); recovery: …/DeckCraft/Recovery/.
• DECKCRAFT_CONTROL_PORT sets the control port; DECKCRAFT_NO_AUDIO=1 plays silently; DECKCRAFT_NO_PREFS=1 skips preferences; DECKCRAFT_NO_RECOVERY=1 skips AutoRecover; DECKCRAFT_DICTIONARIES adds dictionary folders; RUST_LOG sets log levels.

Working with an AI agent

Choose the surface

1. Headless CLI (deckcraft-cli run, render, convert, info, mcp) — best for generating decks, batch exports and verification. No window, no GUI state.
2. MCP stdio (deckcraft-cli mcp) — best when the agent has an MCP client; use run_command/batch for anything the 25 tools do not wrap, and inspect_document/inspect_slide before editing. A headless server starts with no document: call new_presentation or open_presentation first. batch stops at the first error unless keepGoing; tools reject unknown argument names rather than guessing.
3. Control channel (deckcraft --control) — only when a human and agent must share a live window, or UI-only state (dialogs, selection, screenshots) matters. Always ui.inspect/ui.screenshot before pointer work; never click blind.

Prepare inputs

• Pictures: PNG, JPEG, WebP, GIF, BMP, TIFF (not SVG, not HEIC; EMF/WMF only when already inside a deck). Pre-render logos and icons to PNG with transparency.
• Audio/video: MP3, AAC/M4A, ALAC, WAV, AIFF, CAF, FLAC, Ogg, Opus; H.264/HEVC/VP9/AV1 in MP4/MOV/WebM/MKV. Transcode WMA/WMV first.
• Outlines: a Markdown file with # headings, a tab-indented plain-text file, or .rtf (\outlinelevel paragraphs, falling back to \li indent) imports directly (slide.fromOutline).
• Themes: .thmx, or a .pptx/.potx whose first master holds the theme and layouts.

Inspect, repair and convert

• .deckcraft is a zip: inspect presentation.json, media/<id> and chart-parts/<index> with unzip -l/unzip -p. Repair damaged media by restoring the member; do not rewrite the JSON unless the schema is understood. Older files with inline chart bytes still load and migrate on save.
• Do not hand-edit a .pptx zip to "fix" it: use DeckCraft commands and re-export. Unknown PPTX parts are preserved by the writer, but hand-edited XML can break content types or relationships.
• Convert between .deckcraft, .pptx, .pdf, .txt/.md/.rtf and images with convert, remembering that convert writes only the first slide for PNG/JPEG and uses default PDF options.

Verify exports

• Read the command result: exports return {path, bytes} or {files}; assert the file exists and its size is plausible. A zero-byte or missing file is a failure even if the process exited 0.
• Re-open the result: deckcraft-cli info out.pptx and compare slide count/titles/layouts; deckcraft-cli render out.pptx --all and look at the PNGs.
• For PDF, check page count and extracted text; the text layer is selectable but the artwork is raster.
• For .pptx and .ppsx, the strongest test is opening it in PowerPoint/Keynote and checking for a repair prompt, animations, media and theme fonts. The project has not tested a real-deck corpus.
• For GIF, verify the GIF89a header, dimensions, frame count and delay; transitions/builds are intentionally absent.

Do not

• Do not insert SVG, HEIC, or EMF/WMF via insert.picture and expect them to draw.
• Do not promise .ppt, .odp, .pptm, macros, password protection or MP4 export.
• Do not call file.close or app.quit on unsaved work; use app.quit {"save": true} only after saving explicit paths.
• Do not use file.save/--save for .png/.jpg; use file.export/--export/convert (otherwise native zip bytes get an image extension).
• Do not assume PDF is vector or that a .pptx round-trip is lossless.
• Do not rely on font metrics matching PowerPoint exactly; substitute faces change line breaks. Verify visually.
• Do not expose the control channel beyond loopback; it has no authentication.
• Do not trust docs/ where it contradicts the code (request-line size, exit-effect count, SmartArt counts, command counts are stale at this tag).

Verification protocol

Alpha software with active auto-updates: verify every deliverable, keep a native master, and never trust a silent export.

1. Pin the version. Record deckcraft --version before work. Update only between projects, not mid-deck; command ids, formats and export options move between releases.
2. Work in a throwaway directory. Copy sources in; never run destructive tests on the only copy of a deck. Keep a .deckcraft master plus dated backups.
3. Round-trip a small test first. New deck → one slide, shape, table, chart, picture, transition and note → save .deckcraft → export .pptx → reopen the .pptx → inspect counts and render PNGs. Fix workflow problems before touching the real deck.
4. Save before every export. A failed export must not be the only copy of your changes. file.save is atomic via a .saving sibling; exports are ordinary writes.
5. Check every export explicitly. Existence and non-zero size; images: dimensions (and alpha, when transparentBackground was used); PDF: page count and selectable text; PPTX: reopen and render; GIF: header, dimensions, frame count; RTF: re-open as an outline.
6. Look at the pixels. deckcraft-cli render … --all (or MCP render_slide) and inspect the PNGs. Text overflow, missing fonts, blank SVG/EMF pictures and chart scaling are visual failures that a successful exit code will not catch.
7. Open in the target app. If PowerPoint is available, open the exported .pptx and check for repair prompts and lost animations/media. If not, state that fidelity is unverified rather than claiming parity.
8. Keep the native file. The .deckcraft master preserves DeckCraft-only constructs (including chart payloads) and is the safest thing to reopen after a failure.
9. Record what changed. Note version, command lines/JSON params, export options and any manual GUI steps, so a failed export can be reproduced.

Sources & evidence

• Repo: https://github.com/storytold/deckcraft — tag v0.14.1, commit ee39ff67816d0039143ec7c98ea604cefe0cd2e5 (git rev-parse HEAD), inspected 2026-11-02; the v0.13.1 ref was fetched for set diffs.
• Installed bundle: /Applications/DeckCraft.app, CFBundleIdentifier ai.storyteller.deckcraft, version 0.14.1; --version prints deckcraft 0.14.1; universal x86_64+arm64, Developer ID signed, notarization ticket stapled.
• Key files read: README.md; Cargo.toml; docs/{architecture,gaps,file-format-parity,animation-parity,mcp,control-protocol}.md; apps/deckcraft/src/main.rs; apps/deckcraft-cli/src/{main,help}.rs; crates/engine/src/lib.rs, crates/engine/src/cmd/ (counts), crates/model/src/anim.rs, crates/geom/src/preset.rs, crates/format/src/{lib,rtf}.rs, crates/pptx/src/lib.rs, crates/pdf/src/lib.rs, crates/render/src/{images,pattern}.rs, crates/metafile/src/emfplus.rs, crates/media/src/lib.rs, crates/mcp/src/tools.rs, crates/ui-egui/src/{lib,control,dialogs,panels/fillui,sorter,show}.rs.
• Shared libraries (not cloned): the craft-libs crates (craft-media, craft-pdf, …) are pinned to one revision, c5a1cbfb…, in Cargo.toml this release (moved from 92d392cf…). Shared-library behaviour beyond the pin is not audited here.
• Docs that are stale at this tag (code wins): docs/control-protocol.md (16 MiB vs the code's 256 MiB); docs/animation-parity.md (14 exits vs 23); docs/gaps.md (SmartArt counts); docs/architecture.md (320 commands vs 329); ROADMAP.md ("226 commands").
• Not independently verified: PowerPoint's acceptance of exported .pptx/.ppsx without repair on real decks, render fidelity against PowerPoint, runtime command execution, deckcraft-cli execution (not installed on this machine), and any GUI behaviour. Claims here are code and document inspection plus bundle metadata and --version checks; no GUI was launched and no deck was rendered.