Zorto builds slide decks from markdown: one file per slide, ordered by frontmatter, rendered by a presentation template. The template can be native HTML/CSS/JS, reveal.js, or a custom deck runtime. This follows Zorto’s core principle: one markdown file per page.

The model #

A presentation is a section with render_pages = false. Each markdown file in the section becomes a slide. The section’s _index.md controls presentation-level settings, and the slides are assembled into a single HTML file using a custom template.

📂content/presentations/intro/
├── 📝_index.mdtemplate=presentation.html, sort_by=weight
├── 📝title.mdweight=10, layout=center
├── 📝overview.mdweight=20
├── 📝features.mdweight=30, background_color=#16213e
├── 📝demo.mdweight=40
├── 📝closing.mdweight=50, layout=center

Each slide is an independent markdown file. AI agents can create, edit, or reorder slides individually.

Why one file per slide #

Traditional presentation tools (including Quarto) put all slides in a single file separated by headings or horizontal rules. Zorto takes a different approach:

  • AI-friendly: an agent can create, modify, or reorder a single slide without parsing the entire presentation
  • Frontmatter per slide: each slide declares layout, background, and any template-specific settings
  • Weight-based ordering: the weight field controls slide order; increment by 10 to leave room for insertions
  • Git-friendly: diffs show exactly which slides changed

Key features #

Layouts: predefined layouts via [extra] layout: center, image-left, image-right, image-full, title. Or use the default flow layout.

Backgrounds: set background_color, background_image, background_size, and background_opacity in [extra] to control per-slide backgrounds.

Template control: section and slide frontmatter are available to the template, so a site can define its own deck controls, visual treatment, and keyboard behavior.

Progressive reveal: use the fragment shortcode to reveal content incrementally on click.

Speaker notes: use the speaker_notes shortcode to keep notes beside the slide source. Whether notes render in a speaker view depends on the deck template.

Multi-column layouts: use the columns shortcode to split content side-by-side.

Positioned images: use the slide_image shortcode for absolute-positioned images anywhere on a slide.

The render_pages field #

When a section sets render_pages = false, its child pages are rendered to HTML (so their content is available in section.pages) but do not produce individual HTML output files. They are also excluded from the sitemap, feed, search data, and llms.txt. This is what makes presentations work.

The weight field #

Pages can have an optional weight field in frontmatter. When a section uses sort_by = "weight", pages are sorted ascending by weight. Pages without a weight sort last; ties are broken by filename. This is useful beyond presentations — any section that needs explicit ordering.

Further reading #