InfoSlides — put content on a TV from your terminal or your agent

Turn a PowerPoint, a photo, or a live data feed into a video stream playing on any smart TV. The lunch menu on the screen in reception. Opening hours in a shop window. A noticeboard in a school corridor. Room information in a hotel lobby. A live numbers board in an office.

This repo is the infoslides binary: one dependency-free executable that is both a developer CLI and an MCP server for AI agents like Claude Code, Claude Desktop, and Cursor.

The interesting part is that create_tenant is anonymous. An agent with this server installed can take someone from no account at all to content playing on a physical screen — provision the workspace, upload the deck, register the display, assign the schedule, hand back the stream link — without anyone opening a dashboard. As far as we know, no other digital signage platform can be driven that way.

New workspaces land on a permanent free plan: 1 screen, 4 slideshows, 2 users, 200 MB. No credit card, no trial clock, nothing expires. The whole flow below costs nothing and keeps running.

Zero to a live screen

# 1. Install (macOS/Linux; see Install for Windows and MCP clients)
#    Version-pinned — check /releases/latest for the current one.
curl -L https://github.com/arnibj/InfoSlides.MCP/releases/download/v1.2.0/infoslides-v1.2.0-linux-x64.tar.gz | tar xz

# 2. Create a workspace — anonymous, prints an admin API key, saves it to ~/.infoslides
./infoslides tenant create "Acme Cafe" owner@acme.test --save

# 3. Grab a ready-made deck from the starter gallery
./infoslides gallery list
./infoslides slideshow clone <gallery-id> --from-gallery

# 4. Register the screen and tell it what to play
./infoslides device create "Reception TV"
./infoslides schedule assign <device-id> <slideshow-id>

# 5. The link to open on the TV
./infoslides stream link <device-id>

Open that URL in the TV's browser, the InfoSlides TV app, or any HLS-capable player.

TODO (AGENT-06): add the terminal-to-TV GIF here once recorded — empty terminal on the left, a real screen coming to life on the right. Item 10 of the distribution plan; it is the single most persuasive thirty seconds available and this is the spot it belongs in.

As an MCP server

Hook it into an MCP client:

infoslides mcp install --client claude-code      # or claude-desktop / cursor

Or install the .mcpb bundle from the latest release in any client that supports MCP bundles — it carries binaries for all three platforms and needs no runtime and no API key to get started.

Or configure it by hand (stdio transport):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "infoslides": {
      "command": "/path/to/infoslides",
      "args": ["--mcp"],
      "env": { "INFOSLIDES_API_KEY": "isk_admin_..." }
    }
  }
}

INFOSLIDES_API_KEY is optional — leave it out and the agent can create a workspace from scratch.

What the agent gets

27 tools, covering the whole path: workspace provisioning (create_tenant, anonymous, returns the admin key), slideshows including direct .pptx upload (upload_pptx), media slides by URL or direct file upload (upload_media), visibility conditions (time of day, weekday, data triggers), self-updating template slides driven by live data pushes (update_source), devices, schedules with AspectMismatch warnings, HLS stream links, PNG slide previews for self-verification, API keys including push-only keys scoped to a single slide, and Paddle upgrade links. The backend enforces every plan limit — the tool layer cannot bypass them.

A Skill, which is the judgement the tools do not carry: when a self-updating slide beats a fixed one, how to pick between landscape and portrait, how long a slide should stay up for someone queueing versus someone walking past, and how to talk a person through the TV end of it while they are holding a remote.

CLI

infoslides login                          # OAuth in the browser (Google/Microsoft/GitHub)
infoslides tenant create "Acme Cafe" owner@acme.test --save
infoslides gallery list
infoslides slideshow clone <gallery-id> --from-gallery
infoslides slideshow upload-pptx ./deck.pptx           # or: media upload + slide add-media
infoslides media upload ./logo.png
infoslides slide add-media <slideshow-id> --asset-id <media-id> --duration 8
infoslides slide set-conditions <slide-id> --condition time=08:00-11:00
infoslides template create "Weather" --html ./weather.html --css ./weather.css
infoslides slide add-dynamic <slideshow-id> <template-id>
infoslides source update <slide-id> --data '{"tempC": 12}'
infoslides device create "Lobby screen" --width 1080 --height 1920
infoslides schedule assign <device-id> <slideshow-id>
infoslides stream link <device-id>

Global options: --api-url, --api-key, --json. Credential precedence: flags → INFOSLIDES_API_KEY / INFOSLIDES_API_URL → ~/.infoslides/ → defaults.

Update notices

No install route notifies you of a new release on its own, so the binary checks for one itself: at most once a day, in the background, cached to ~/.infoslides/update-check.json. The notice goes to stderr in CLI mode (so --json output stays clean and pipeable) and into the server instructions in --mcp mode, where an agent can pass it on.

The check never sits on the critical path — the notice you see comes from the cache and the refresh is for next time — so no command is slower for it and being offline costs nothing. Set INFOSLIDES_NO_UPDATE_CHECK=1 to switch it off; it also disables itself when CI is set.

Install

Download from the latest release:

Platform	Artefact
Windows	infoslides-v<version>-win-x64.zip
Linux	infoslides-v<version>-linux-x64.tar.gz
macOS (Apple Silicon)	infoslides-v<version>-osx-arm64.tar.gz
MCP clients	infoslides-mcp-v<version>.mcpb

Every release ships sha256sums.txt. Nothing is needed at runtime — the binary is Native AOT compiled. Or build from source:

dotnet publish src/InfoSlides.Cli -c Release -r linux-x64   # or win-x64 / osx-arm64

Links

• InfoSlides — https://infoslides.app
• REST API reference — https://infoslides.app/docs/api (the /v1 surface these tools wrap)
• Guide for AI agents — https://infoslides.app/agents.md

Repository layout

Path	Purpose
SKILL.md	The Skill: signage judgement to pair with the tools.
API-CONTRACT.md	The agent-facing REST contract the InfoSlides backend implements.
BACKEND-CHANGES.md	Checklist of InfoSlides-side work (TenantApiKeys table, gatekeeping, …).
docs/PUBLISHING.md	Release, MCPB bundling, and MCP registry publishing runbook.
mcpb/	MCPB bundle manifest template.
src/InfoSlides.Core	Shared API client, models, AOT JSON context, config, auth.
src/InfoSlides.Cli	The infoslides executable: CLI verbs + MCP server.
tests/	Unit tests and end-to-end MCP stdio smoke tests.

Development

dotnet build          # AOT analyzers run as errors — keep it warning-free
dotnet test           # unit + MCP end-to-end tests (no network needed)

The MCP SDK tools are registered via the AOT-safe WithTools<T>() path; every wire type must be listed in InfoSlidesJsonContext (a test fails if one is missing). In --mcp mode stdout is the protocol — log only to stderr.

Tool descriptions are trigger text, not documentation: a model matches them against what the user just said, so they lead with the situation ("register the physical screen — the TV in reception, the menu board above the counter") rather than the API operation. Tests in McpStdioSmokeTests pin that vocabulary so it cannot quietly regress.

Licence

MIT.