Building & deploying

One self-contained file

A deck builds to a single self-contained file with JS and CSS inlined and assets base64’d. There’s nothing else to host. The file is named after the deck folder, so my-talk/ builds to dist/my-talk.html.

liebstoeckel build my-talk        # → my-talk/dist/my-talk.html

The scaffolded build.ts does the same thing, so bun run build inside the deck works too:

build.ts

import { buildDeck } from "@liebstoeckel/thumbnails/build";

// builds the single file, then embeds slide thumbnails (skips gracefully
// if no Chromium / when LIEBSTOECKEL_NO_THUMBS=1)
await buildDeck({ entry: "./index.html", outdir: "./dist" });

What ends up in the file

• A generator stamp in the head (an HTML comment plus a <meta name="generator">) recording the engine and CLI versions that built it, so you can tell what produced a file. See the file format reference.
• Your bundled, minified JS (engine + slides + plugins’ client code).
• The compiled CSS (Tailwind + brand variables + code/atmosphere styles).
• Pre-tokenized highlighted code (no Shiki at runtime).
• The plugin manifest: a JSON <script> listing the deck’s plugins, with any server bundles base64-encoded (decoded + run only by a live server, never in the browser).
• Slide thumbnails: a manifest of WebP data-URIs for the overview grid (see below).
• Third-party license notices: an inert <script> listing the licenses of everything bundled into the file (the libraries, the fonts, and the MPL-2.0 engine). Minification strips license comments, so the build puts the required attribution back. It’s computed from what this build bundled, so it stays correct when you swap a font or add a library. Inspect or CI-gate it with liebstoeckel licenses.

Deploying

Because it’s one static file, deploy anywhere:

• Open dist/<deck-slug>.html directly (file URL); it just works offline.
• Drop it on any static host (S3, GitHub Pages, Netlify, a plain web server).
• Email it / put it in a shared drive.

To present it live to a room or the internet, you don’t deploy the file. You run liebstoeckel live (optionally via a relay).

Opting out of thumbnails

Thumbnails need a headless Chromium (see Chromium setup for how to provide one). The build skips them gracefully (with a note, never failing) when none is available or when you set:

LIEBSTOECKEL_NO_THUMBS=1 liebstoeckel build my-talk

Thumbnails How build-time slide thumbnails work.

Chromium setup Install a browser or point at an existing one.