Viewcake is a real-time presentation amplification platform.
It helps presenters turn a live deck into an interactive audience experience. A presenter uploads a presentation, starts a live session, and receives a short join code. Audience members join from their own device to follow along, save key slides, add notes, ask questions, and eventually share individual slides.
The goal is simple:
Make presentations live beyond the room.
Viewcake is not meant to replace PowerPoint, Keynote, Google Slides, or Canva.
Instead, it sits beside them.
A presenter creates their deck wherever they already work, exports it as a PDF, uploads it to Viewcake, and uses Viewcake as the live audience layer.
Presenter logs in ↓ Uploads a PDF deck ↓ Viewcake creates slide records ↓ Presenter starts a live session ↓ Viewcake generates a short join code ↓ Audience goes to the join page ↓ Audience enters the code ↓ Audience follows the presentation live ↓ Audience can save, annotate, ask, and share slides ↓ Presenter reviews post-session engagement
The first version of Viewcake is focused on proving the core experience:
- Presenter dashboard
- Presentation creation
- PDF-first deck upload flow
- Slide records
- Live session creation
- Audience join page
- Audience live presentation route
- Slide-level sharing route
- Foundation for annotations, saves, shares, and engagement events
The following features are intentionally out of scope for the first foundation pass:
- Payments
- Organizations / teams
- Full authentication
- AI summaries
- AI slide extraction
- PowerPoint parsing
- Real-time WebSocket control
- Email notifications
- Public marketplace or discovery features
- Advanced analytics dashboards
These can be added after the MVP foundation is stable.
Viewcake is one app with two main experiences.
The presenter side is the control room.
Planned routes:
- /login
- /dashboard
- /presentations
- /presentations/new
- /presentations/[id]
- /sessions/[id]/presenter
The presenter will eventually be able to:
- Log in
- Upload a deck
- Create and manage presentations
- Start a live session
- Control or monitor the active slide
- View audience activity
- Review post-event engagement
The audience side is designed to be fast and frictionless.
Planned routes:
- /join
- /live/[code]
- /s/[slideShareId]
The audience will eventually be able to:
- Enter a short session code
- Join a live presentation
- Follow along from their own device
- Save slides
- Add personal notes
- Ask questions
- Share individual slides
Current recommended stack:
- Next.js App Router
- TypeScript
- Tailwind CSS
- Prisma
- PostgreSQL-ready schema
- Local file storage for MVP uploads
- PDF-first presentation handling
The MVP architecture is organized around these core objects:
- User
- Presentation
- Slide
- LiveSession
- AudienceParticipant
- SlideAnnotation
- SlideSave
- SlideShare
- EngagementEvent
User— presenter or account ownerPresentation— uploaded deck and metadataSlide— individual slide/page from a presentationLiveSession— one live event using a presentationAudienceParticipant— anonymous or identified viewerSlideAnnotation— note or comment attached to a slideSlideSave— saved slide actionSlideShare— shareable slide recordEngagementEvent— analytics event such as view, save, share, or question
Install dependencies:
npm install
Run the development server:
npm run dev
Build the app:
npm run build
Copy the example environment file:
cp .env.example .env
Expected variables:
- DATABASE_URL
- APP_URL
- AUTH_SECRET
Authentication and database wiring may still be placeholder-level depending on the current implementation stage.
For the MVP, uploads are expected to use local storage.
Planned local folders:
- uploads/decks
- uploads/slides
These folders should not be committed to Git.
Viewcake should stay simple until the core loop is proven.
Guiding rules:
- Build the presenter and audience flow first.
- Avoid overbuilding before a real session works.
- Keep the app PDF-first at the beginning.
- Treat slide-level interaction as the core product.
- Keep AI features separate until the base product is stable.
- Prefer clear architecture over clever abstractions.
- Keep routes and models easy to understand.
The long-term version of Viewcake should help speakers, educators, consultants, workshops, and event organizers turn presentations into reusable audience assets.
Future possibilities include:
- AI-generated session summaries
- Speaker follow-up reports
- Slide-level engagement analytics
- Lead capture
- Team workspaces
- Audience Q&A
- Exportable content packs
- CRM integrations
- Event landing pages
- Branded audience portals
Viewcake is in early MVP foundation development.
The immediate goal is to create a clean working foundation that supports:
Presentation upload ↓ Slide generation ↓ Live session creation ↓ Audience join ↓ Basic engagement tracking