Url As Slide Deck And Constrained Editor Model
Sources: 1 • Confidence: Medium • Updated: 2026-04-12 10:09
Key takeaways
- The author sometimes presents using a browser window with one tab per page and advances through tabs.
- The author stated the talk was delivered using the new macOS app they built in approximately 45 minutes the night before.
- The app gained a remote-control feature implemented as a web server listening on 0.0.0.0:9123 that serves a mobile-friendly page with left/right buttons and a start/stop presentation toggle.
- The author stated that using GET requests for endpoints such as /next and /prev introduces CSRF vulnerabilities and that they considered this acceptable for this application.
- Present supports a play mode that can be activated from a menu or with Cmd+Shift+P to enter full screen, uses left/right arrow keys for navigation, supports font size adjustments and page scrolling, and exits with Escape.
Sections
Url As Slide Deck And Constrained Editor Model
- The author sometimes presents using a browser window with one tab per page and advances through tabs.
- The author specified a SwiftUI presentation app design where each slide is a URL, with an editor view showing a webview and a URL list, and a full-screen play mode navigated by left/right arrow keys.
- In Present, a talk is represented as an ordered sequence of URLs editable via a sidebar that supports adding, removing, and reordering items.
- Present supports a play mode that can be activated from a menu or with Cmd+Shift+P to enter full screen, uses left/right arrow keys for navigation, supports font size adjustments and page scrolling, and exits with Escape.
- Present can export and import presentations as a .txt file containing a newline-delimited list of URLs.
- The author stated that presenting from browser tabs has a failure mode where a browser crash can wipe out access to the entire deck during a talk.
Rapid Native Tooling Via Ai Assistance
- The author stated the talk was delivered using the new macOS app they built in approximately 45 minutes the night before.
- The app is called Present, is built with Swift and SwiftUI, and the author reported it as 355KB in size (76KB compressed).
- The author built a custom macOS presentation app using AI-assisted "vibe coding" the night before the talk.
- The author concluded that Swift was the right choice for building a full-screen macOS app embedding web content with network control and found the resulting code simple and sufficient.
- The author stated they expect to build more small personal macOS apps in the future using existing tools and reported no longer being afraid of Swift after this project.
Cross Device Remote Control Over Local Http Plus Overlay Network
- The app gained a remote-control feature implemented as a web server listening on 0.0.0.0:9123 that serves a mobile-friendly page with left/right buttons and a start/stop presentation toggle.
- After iterative prompting, the remote interface included a slide indicator, previous/next buttons, a large Start button, and font size adjustment controls.
- The remote interface added a touch-enabled thin scroll bar that scrolls the currently visible web page up and down on the presentation screen by sliding a finger.
- The author stated that using Tailscale on both laptop and phone allowed the phone to reach the control server via a Tailscale IP from anywhere without worrying about Wi‑Fi network restrictions between devices.
- The author described the touch scroll feature as clunky but sufficient for handling pages where key content initially loads below the fold.
Ai Generated Code Governance And Security Tradeoffs
- The author stated that using GET requests for endpoints such as /next and /prev introduces CSRF vulnerabilities and that they considered this acceptable for this application.
- The author reported using a pattern of asking the model for a linear walkthrough of the entire codebase and documented this as a "Linear walkthroughs" pattern in an Agentic Engineering Patterns guide.
- The author stated Claude Code implemented the remote-control web server using raw socket programming without a library, including a minimal HTTP parser for routing.
- The author stated the code was pushed to GitHub with a prominent disclaimer that it was vibe coded and only promised to work on the author's machine, and that the author later decided to inspect the code.
Operational Reliability Mechanisms For Live Use
- Present supports a play mode that can be activated from a menu or with Cmd+Shift+P to enter full screen, uses left/right arrow keys for navigation, supports font size adjustments and page scrolling, and exits with Escape.
- Present automatically saves URLs on every change so that presentation state can be restored after a crash and restart.
- The author stated that presenting from browser tabs has a failure mode where a browser crash can wipe out access to the entire deck during a talk.
Watchlist
- The author stated that using GET requests for endpoints such as /next and /prev introduces CSRF vulnerabilities and that they considered this acceptable for this application.
- He extended the project beyond the initial app to add remote control via his phone.
Unknowns
- Can the app and its remote-control feature be reproduced by an independent user (build/run steps, environment requirements, and functional parity with the described behavior)?
- What are the exact network security properties of the remote-control server (authentication, origin checks, allowed interfaces, and whether it is intended to be reachable beyond trusted devices)?
- How robust is the raw-socket HTTP implementation under malformed requests, concurrent connections, and hostile inputs?
- What is the observed crash frequency or failure rate of the prior browser-tab workflow versus the new app in real presentation conditions?
- Does the .txt newline-delimited URL format integrate cleanly with version control and collaboration in practice (merge behavior, ordering conflicts, and review ergonomics)?