What is Prezl?

Prezl is a presentation tool that looks and feels like a real code editor. Step through your codebase one moment at a time — reveal files, focus regions, and trigger demos exactly when you need them. The clarity of slides, the context of real code, none of the fragility of a live demo.

A talk is structured as a series of stages — curated states of the codebase, typically (but not necessarily) modelled as git branches. Switching stages walks the audience through how the code evolves while keeping the presenter firmly on rails: code is explorable inside curated boundaries, navigation is deterministic, and nothing builds or runs for real.

Why another tool?

Prezl is built for:

• Conference speakers walking an audience through code that changes over time.
• Workshop presenters and trainers running repeatable demos.
• Developer advocates who want "real code" credibility without "real code" risk.
• Technical content creators recording a walkthrough.

If you've ever shared your terminal and muttered "okay, let me zoom in… wait, close that tab… no, not that one…" — Prezl is trying to make that never happen.

How it works, in one minute

A Prezl project is a folder containing:

my-talk/
  prezl.yaml         ← the manifest: stages, demos, metadata
  files/
    src/
      main.ts        ← ordinary source files, marked up with @prezl comments
      dashboard.ts
  videos/
    demo.mp4         ← optional: video demos referenced from prezl.yaml

The YAML declares stages. The source files carry inline @prezl comments that control what's visible, folded, or highlighted on each stage:

// @prezl file=[shell...]    ← this file only exists from `shell` onwards

export function registerDashboard(app) {
  // @prezl focus=[shell]    ← highlight these lines on the shell stage
  const dashboard = createDashboard()
  // @prezl end
}

At presentation time, Prezl parses the directives for the current stage, strips them, and renders the result with VS Code-grade syntax highlighting (Shiki / TextMate grammars) in a static, read-only viewer styled to feel like an IDE.

Installing Prezl

Prezl is a Tauri desktop app. See the repo README for development setup — packaged releases are coming as part of v1.

Your first project

Once Prezl is running:

1. Click Open project folder on the welcome screen.
2. Pick any directory that contains a prezl.yaml. The bundled example at examples/demo/ works out of the box.
3. Use the stage dropdown or press Space / PageDown to step through stages. Shift+Space / PageUp goes back.

That's it. Keep reading for:

• Project structure — what goes in prezl.yaml and files/
• Stages — how stages drive the presentation flow
• Directives — the @prezl comment grammar
• Demos — URL and video scenes
• Symbol navigation — clickable jumps and Ctrl+T
• VS Code extension — directive colouring, snippets, and stages tree while authoring