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A viewer sees the feature narrated over the screen it runs on, with every callout landing on the word that names it. A demo ages faster than anything else a company publishes, because the product moves every week. In DeckTalk the demo is text and code, so a renamed button is a one-line edit and a rebuild of the section that shows it. Nothing else is recorded again, and nothing else is voiced again.

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What a viewer gets

  • Each callout, arrow and highlight appears on the word that names it, so the eye is never hunting for what the voice is talking about.
  • Real product footage, because a section can be a screen recording rather than a page.
  • A cut with no dead air, because DeckTalk cuts the video to the narration and not the other way round.
  • Captions, chapters and a transcript page, which a demo needs on a site where most viewers watch with the sound off.

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What the author writes

A screen recording enters the video as a clip section. The section names its file in decktalk.toml, and decktalk clip cuts a span of a built section and its narration into a clip file and its words file. A sound effect lands on a cue through a [[mix.sfx]] entry, and the music bed comes from the [soundscape.music] table.

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The workflow

1

Write the pitch first

Write script.md before the slides, because the words decide the cuts. Keep each section to its budget and read it aloud once.
2

Build it without voice

decktalk build --no-voice gives a complete video with placeholder narration, which is enough to judge the pacing before anyone spends a credit.
3

Drop the product footage in

Add a clip section for each screen recording, then run decktalk verify to see every seam between a page section and a clip section.
4

Voice it and check the landings

decktalk preflight freezes every reveal and estimates the run, then a voiced build writes the takes. decktalk verify reports every cue that did not land on its word.
5

Rebuild the section the product change touched

Edit the sentence or the callout, then run decktalk build --only 3. Every other section keeps its take and its recording.
Read Quickstart for the first build, Add a clip section for screen recordings, and Put a sound effect on a cue for the accents a demo lives on. The other two use cases with worked examples are technical tutorials and lessons.