Creating Presentations

Toboggan talks are stored as TOML and can be generated from Markdown/HTML source folders with toboggan-cli.

Step-by-step: create your first presentation

1. Create a new file

touch my-talk.toml

2. Write the presentation header

title = "My First Talk"
date = "2026-05-30"
footer = "Demo footer"

These are the core Talk fields serialized by toboggan-core.

3. Add slides

Each slide is a [[slides]] entry. Slides appear in the order you write them.

[[slides]]
kind = "Part"

[slides.title]
type = "Text"
text = "Introduction"

A Part slide acts as a section divider.

[[slides]]
kind = "Standard"

[slides.title]
type = "Text"
text = "Welcome!"

[slides.body]
type = "Text"
text = "This is my first slide. Toboggan supports Markdown-like text content."

4. Add more slides

[[slides]]
kind = "Standard"

[slides.title]
type = "Text"
text = "Key Points"

[slides.body]
type = "Text"
text = "- First point\n- Second point\n- Third point"

[[slides]]
kind = "Standard"

[slides.title]
type = "Text"
text = "Code Demo"

[slides.body]
type = "Html"
raw = "<pre><code class=\"language-rust\">fn hello() { println!(\"Hello Toboggan!\"); }</code></pre>"
alt = "Rust code example"

[[slides]]
kind = "Standard"

[slides.title]
type = "Text"
text = "Thanks!"

[slides.body]
type = "Text"
text = "Thank you for watching!"

5. Run the server

toboggan-server my-talk.toml

Open http://localhost:8080 in your browser to see your presentation.

Full example

title = "My Talk"
date = "2026-05-30"

[[slides]]
kind = "Part"

[slides.title]
type = "Text"
text = "Part 1"

[[slides]]
kind = "Standard"

[slides.title]
type = "Text"
text = "Welcome!"

[slides.body]
type = "Text"
text = "Hello world!"

[[slides]]
kind = "Standard"

[slides.title]
type = "Text"
text = "Styled Slide"

[slides.style]
classes = ["centered"]
style = "background: #2d3436; color: #dfe6e9;"

[[slides]]
kind = "Part"

[slides.title]
type = "Text"
text = "Part 2"

[[slides]]
kind = "Standard"

[slides.title]
type = "Text"
text = "With Notes"

[slides.body]
type = "Text"
text = "Slide content here"

[slides.notes]
type = "Text"
text = "Speaker notes — only visible in presenter mode"

Progressive reveals (steps)

To reveal content incrementally within a single slide, wrap each chunk in a <div class="step step-N">:

[[slides]]
kind = "Standard"

[slides.title]
type = "Text"
text = "Progressive Example"

[slides.body]
type = "Html"
raw = """
<div class="step step-0">
<h3>First thing to show</h3>
<p>This appears when the slide loads.</p>
</div>
<div class="step step-1">
<h3>Second thing</h3>
<p>This appears on click / next.</p>
</div>
<div class="step step-2">
<h3>Third thing</h3>
<p>This appears on the next click.</p>
</div>
"""
alt = """
## Progressive Example

### Step 1
First thing to show.

### Step 2
Second thing to show.

### Step 3
Third thing to show.
"""

The numbering starts at 0 and increments by 1 for each step. The step_counts in the API response ([0, 2, 1, ...]) tells the client how many steps each slide has (0 = single view, no steps).

Slide fields

Style fields

Notes

[slides.notes]
type = "Text"
text = "Your speaker notes here"

Notes are visible in presenter mode and are not shown to the audience.

Converting Markdown to TOML

If you prefer writing in Markdown:

# Convert a folder of markdown files to TOML
toboggan-cli slides/ -f toml -o presentation.toml

Your folder structure:

slides/
├── 01-intro.md
├── 02-details.md
└── 03-end.md

Each Markdown file becomes a slide. The frontmatter of each file sets the slide metadata:

+++
title = "My Slide"
duration = "1m"
+++

Slide content here...

Example presentations

The repository includes real-world example presentations in the slides_ex/ directory, originally created by Trail of Bits for security conferences:

• Building Secure Smart Contracts — a folder-based presentation (slides_ex/presentations/Building Secure Smart Contracts/) ready to be converted with the CLI:

  toboggan-cli "slides_ex/presentations/Building Secure Smart Contracts/" -o my_talk.toml
  toboggan-server my_talk.toml
  

• How to Fuzz Like a Pro — available in two formats:

  • TOML (pre-compiled, 51 slides):

    toboggan-server "slides_ex/presentations/How to Fuzz Like a Pro/how-to-fuzz-like-a-pro.toml"
    

  • Markdown (folder-based, 51 slides — editable individually):

    toboggan-server "slides_ex/presentations/How to Fuzz Like a Pro/markdown/"
    

These examples demonstrate the project structure and frontmatter conventions used in real talks.

Markdown folder as input

Starting with v0.1.1-beta.2, toboggan-server accepts a directory of Markdown files directly — no TOML conversion needed:

# Serve a folder of markdown slides directly
toboggan-server ./my-slides/

# With public dir for images
toboggan-server ./my-slides/ --public-dir ./my-slides/assets

The folder structure follows the same convention as the CLI input:

my-slides/
├── _cover.md           # title and date metadata
├── _head.html           # custom HTML head injection
├── 01-introduction.md   # individual slides
└── 02-deep-dive/
    ├── _part.md         # section divider
    └── 01-details.md

When a directory is passed, the server parses it on startup using the same parser as toboggan-cli.