Κῦμα (Kyma) - Ancient Greek: A wave, billow, or surge; metaphorically representing the flow and movement of ideas and presentations.

A terminal-based presentation tool that creates beautiful presentations from markdown files with smooth animated transitions.

 

Kyma being used for a talk at Laravel Greece's 10 year anniversary meetup in Athens

 

Features

• Markdown-based: Write your presentations in simple markdown syntax
• Rich rendering: Beautiful terminal rendering using Glamour markdown renderer
• Smooth transitions: Multiple animated transition effects between slides
  • Swipe left/right
  • Slide up/down
  • Flip effects
• Hot reload: Live reloading of presentation files during editing by default
• Customizable styling: Configure borders, colors, and layouts via YAML front matter
• Theme support: Choose from built-in Glamour themes or load custom JSON theme files
• Flexible layouts: Center, align, and position content with various layout options
• Simple navigation: Intuitive keyboard controls for presentation flow (vim style btw)
  • Command palette with slide search and filtering
  • Direct slide jumping by number
  • Multi-slide forward/backward jumping
  • Quick first/last slide navigation
• Presentation timer: Built-in timer system with per-slide and global timing
  • Toggle timer display with a single key
  • Track time spent on each slide
  • Monitor total presentation duration
  • Automatic pause/resume during slide transitions

Installation

Using Go

go install github.com/museslabs/kyma@latest

From Source

git clone https://github.com/museslabs/kyma.git
cd kyma
go build -o kyma

Usage

Basic Usage

# Display a presentation
kyma presentation.md

# Display a presentation without hot reloading
kyma presentation.md -s

# Show version
kyma version

Navigation

• Next slide: →, l, or Space
• Previous slide: ← or h
• First slide: Home, Shift+↑, or 0
• Last slide: End, Shift+↓, or $
• Command palette: / or p - Opens a searchable list of all slides for quick navigation
• Go to slide: g or : - Jump directly to a specific slide number
• Jump slides: 1-9 + h/← or l/→ - Jump multiple slides backward/forward (e.g., 5h jumps 5 slides back)
• Toggle timer: t - Shows/hides the timer display with total and per-slide timing
• Quit: q, Esc, or Ctrl+C

Configuration

Kyma presentations use a simple format with slides separated by ---- and optional YAML front matter for configuration.

Presentation Format

# First Slide

This is the content of the first slide

---

---

## transition: swipeLeft

# Second Slide

This slide will appear with a swipe left transition

---

---

transition: slideUp
style:
border: rounded
border_color: "#9999CC"
layout: center
theme: dracula

---

# Third Slide

This slide has custom styling with Dracula theme

---

---

style:
theme: /path/to/custom-theme.json

---

# Fourth Slide

This slide uses a custom JSON theme file

Available Transitions

• none - No transition (default)
• swipeLeft - Slide swipes in from right to left
• swipeRight - Slide swipes in from left to right
• slideUp - Slide slides up from bottom
• slideDown - Slide slides down from top
• flip - Flip transition effect

Style Configuration

You can customize each slide's appearance using the style configuration:

style:
  border: rounded # Border style: normal, rounded, double, thick, hidden, block
  border_color: "#FF0000" # Hex color for border (or "default" for theme-based color)
  layout: center # Layout positioning: center, left, right, top, bottom
  theme: dracula # Theme name or path to custom JSON theme file

Layout can also be specified as a combination: layout: center,right

Timer Display

The timer display shows two timing metrics:

• Total: The total duration of the presentation
• Slide: The time spent on the current slide

The timer display appears as an overlay in the top-left corner of the screen when toggled with the t key. The timer automatically:

• Starts when the presentation begins
• Pauses when switching slides
• Resumes when a new slide is displayed
• Maintains separate timing for each slide
• Preserves timing state during navigation

Global Configuration

Kyma supports a global configuration file that can be used to set default styles and create named presets. The configuration file can be placed in either:

• The current directory as kyma.yaml
• The user's config directory as ~/.config/kyma.yaml

You can also specify a custom config file path using the -c or --config flag:

kyma -c /path/to/config.yaml presentation.md

The configuration file follows this structure:

global:
  style:
    border: rounded
    border_color: "#9999CC"
    layout: center
    theme: dracula

presets:
  minimal:
    style:
      border: hidden
      theme: notty
  dark:
    style:
      border: rounded
      theme: dracula

You can use presets in your slides by specifying the preset name:

---
preset: minimal
---
# This slide uses the minimal preset

Configuration precedence (from highest to lowest):

1. Named preset configuration
2. Slide-specific configuration
3. Global configuration

Theme Support

Kyma supports both built-in Glamour themes and custom JSON theme files:

Built-in Themes

• ascii - ASCII-only styling
• auto - Automatically detected theme
• dark - Dark theme (default)
• dracula - Dracula color scheme
• tokyo-night (or tokyonight) - Tokyo Night theme
• light - Light theme
• notty - Plain text styling
• pink - Pink color scheme

Custom JSON Themes

You can create custom themes by providing a path to a JSON file that follows the Glamour StyleConfig format. If the theme name doesn't match a built-in theme, Kyma will attempt to load it as a JSON file:

style:
  theme: ./themes/my-custom-theme.json

The border color will automatically adapt to use the theme's H1 background color unless explicitly overridden with border_color.o

For more info on how to create custom styles, you can refer to Glamour's documentation.

Contributing

All contributions are welcome! If you're planning a significant change or you're unsure about an idea, please open an issue first so we can discuss it in detail.

Development

1. Fork the repository
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add some amazing feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)
5. Open a Pull Request

Acknowledgements

• Charm for their amazing TUI libraries:
  • Bubble Tea - Terminal UI framework
  • Glamour - Markdown rendering
  • Lipgloss - Style definitions
  • Harmonica - Smooth animations
• Cobra for CLI interface
• fsnotify for file watching capabilities

Roadmap

• Add support for more style options like text color and background color ✅ Done!
• Allow choosing from any glamour themes ✅ Done!
• Support for custom JSON theme files ✅ Done!
• Create grid-based slide layouts with transitions for each pane
• Add more transition effects
• Support image rendering in terminals (e.g., via the Kitty protocol)