The dashboard

Your library is the first thing Quodra shows you. Everything you can do to a deck without opening it — file it, tag it, rename it, duplicate it, export it, throw it away — happens here.

The dashboard has two parts: the sidebar down the left, and the view it opens beside it. The sidebar chooses what the view shows, starts a new deck, and searches everything you can open.

The sidebar#

At the very top is the workspace button: the Quodra mark, the workspace you are looking at — Personal, or a team's name — and, on a cloud account, your plan under it (Free plan, Academic plan), with a Beta chip beside it. While the plan is still on its way the line shows a grey shape rather than guessing; if it cannot be read at all, it says nothing rather than the wrong plan. The button opens a menu:

• Personal, and each team you belong to — choosing one shows its decks on Home and in the Library. Personal holds your own decks and those shared with you directly; a team holds its own, and its Shared with me lists the team's decks that others made. A deck you make goes into the workspace you are looking at, where you can edit there — with a viewer's seat on a team it goes into Personal. Switching moves no deck, and Search still finds everything you can open.
• Your plan, with Upgrade — or Manage plan on a paid one.
• About Quodra, which opens the marketing site.

Then, top to bottom:

• New — opens New, where every deck, layout, sample, import and studio starts; N does the same from anywhere on the home.
• Search — opens Search over the home; ⌘K (Ctrl K on Windows and Linux) does the same from anywhere on the home.
• Home — where you left off and the ways to start: see Home.
• Library — every deck you can open, with a count beside it, under four tabs: All, Owned by me, Shared with me and Recent.
• Shared with me — the Library's tab of that name: decks other people have given you access to. A small new count says how many were shared or changed since you last looked here on this device.
• Templates & samples — the layouts, then the whole sample gallery: see Templates & samples.
• Studios — the label opens the Studios page; under it Circuit Studio, Molecule Studio, and Matter Lab, always listed. The first two are standalone drawing surfaces with libraries of their own. Matter Lab is different: it is a workspace over the Matter objects in a deck, sharing that deck's undo — so opening it from here takes you into your most recently edited deck and puts the lab over it. If your library is empty, a new deck is created for the lab to land in.
• Folders — see Folders below.

At the foot: Assistants, which opens the Assistants page, where you connect an AI tool you already use, with how many are connected (1 on); Trash; Settings; Help & docs, which opens this documentation in a new tab; and your account.

Send feedback, in your account's menu when your account is connected to the cloud, opens a short form: a category, a severity (blocking, normal, minor), a one-line summary, a description, and an optional screenshot of the screen you were on. Screenshots are enabled by default and can include visible slide content. Turn off Attach a screenshot of this screen before sending if you do not want the image included. See Account & privacy for the technical context sent with feedback.

On a phone#

Below 760 pixels wide — a phone, or a narrow window — the sidebar folds into a header: the workspace button (Personal ▾), Search, and your initials with the save dot on their corner. The places go to a bar at the foot of the screen — Home, Library, New (the violet square in the middle), Shared and Studios — and the rest of the sidebar heads your account's menu, which opens from your initials: Templates & samples, Assistants, Trash, Settings and Help & docs, then the account's own items. Your folders are the Library's Folder filter.

Home keeps its order: the greeting with one line of what changed — A comment and three changes from your assistant since yesterday — Continue with Continue and Present side by side, what changed as a list, a press on a row opening it, then your recent decks as rows. The Library, and Templates & samples, are single columns of rows. The editor opens on a phone too, its panels as drawers over the slide, but it is laid out for a larger screen: edit on a tablet or a computer where you can.

Between 760 and 940 pixels — an iPad held upright — the sidebar stays whole, a little narrower.

Home#

Home is laid out for where your library is.

While it holds fewer than three decks, Home is a first visit:

• Welcome to Quodra, and one line on what a Quodra deck is.
• Start with a sample — three finished lectures from one field, a Field menu to choose another, and All levels, Undergraduate and Graduate. Open shows a sample at once; nothing is saved until your first edit, and then the copy is yours, in your library. The field you choose here is remembered on this device.
• Your first technical deck beside the samples.
• Or start your own — Blank presentation (one click), From a template and Import a file, the last two opening New at that source; and Set up an assistant, if you would rather start from an AI tool you already use.
• Or build an object first — the three studios, one line each.
• Your presentations — your decks so far, or a line saying they will show here. There is nothing to filter, sort or rearrange yet; that waits in the Library.

From three decks on, Home is for coming back:

• The date, a greeting by first name — Good morning, Good afternoon, or Good evening — and one line saying where you left off: You left Signal conditioning on slide 8. Where Since yesterday is on, the line goes on to say what changed: Since yesterday: a comment, a shared deck and three changes from your assistant.
• Continue, with the deck you edited last, and what it holds: 10 equations · 6 charts · 5 circuits; beside it, Since yesterday when there is something new.
• The checklist, as one line, while it is unfinished.
• Recent — the next four decks you edited, with Open Library for the rest.
• Start something — six tiles: Blank makes an empty 16:9 deck in one click; Template, Sample, Import and Circuit open New at that source; Assistant says whether an AI tool is connected and opens the Assistants page.
• Studios — a card for each studio with the last thing you opened in it on this device, New circuit or New molecule, and Open studio; Matter Lab's card names the deck it would open over. All studios opens the Studios page.
• Samples in your field — three samples from the field you last chose (in the gallery or on your first visit), else the one most of your own decks are tagged with, and a tile into the whole gallery.

A folder chosen in the sidebar opens the Library filtered to it.

Continue#

Continue holds the deck you edited last, open on the slide you were on — the editor remembers it on each device. It shows that slide, Continue · slide 8 of 19, the title, when it was edited and its folder, the live objects it holds, whether your work is saved (and whether its Python is paused on this device), and a strip of the five slides around that one, marked you were here:

• Continue on slide 8 opens the editor there (on a phone the button says Continue).
• Present presents from that slide.
• Share opens the deck's sharing, on a cloud account.
• A slide in the strip opens the editor on that slide.

The deck is read just after Home appears, so for a moment the picture is its first slide and the eyebrow may say Continue where you left off.

Since yesterday#

Rolling out to cloud accounts. Beside Continue, Home lists what changed since you last looked, newest first, four at most:

• a comment someone left on a deck you can open: Reply on slide 4 opens the deck at that slide with the thread open and its reply box ready;
• a deck shared with you, by whom and whether you can view or edit it: Open;
• what an AI assistant you connected changed in your decks, by how many edits and the first of them: Review changes opens the deck's Revision history at that revision;
• Python paused in a deck on this device, because you have not trusted its code yet: Review.

Mark all read clears the list on every device you use; All activity lists the last thirty days. With nothing new, the list is not shown and Continue takes the width. Shared with me in the sidebar then counts the decks shared with you since you last read the list.

The Library#

The Library lists every deck you can open, under four tabs, each with its count:

• All — everything, yours and what has been shared with you; the quickest way to find a deck you have mis-filed.
• Owned by me — the decks you made.
• Shared with me — decks someone else owns that you can open in the workspace you are looking at: shared with you directly in Personal, your team's in a team. See Shared with me.
• Recent — every deck, always ordered by last edit.

The heading names how many decks you have — 23 presentations, or 8 of 23 while a filter narrows them — and carries Select, the Sort menu and the grid and list switch on the right. The arrow keys move between the tabs. The filter field — Filter by title or tag, at the end of the filters' row — narrows the list as you type, at any size.

Filters. Once your library holds eight decks, a row of filters appears under the tabs, each offered when your library has something for it:

• Folder — the decks filed in one folder.
• Tags — the decks carrying one of your tags.
• Field — the decks tagged with one of the sample gallery's fields.
• Contains — the decks holding a kind of live object: equations, charts, code cells, circuits, spectra…
• Edited — Today, This week or This month.

Each filter you apply shows as a chip — Folder: Course, Contains code cells — that takes it away again, with Clear all beside two or more. A folder opened from the sidebar and a tag pressed on a card arrive as chips too, however small the library.

Grid and list. The grid shows deck cards. The list is a table: a box to select the deck; its name with the cover, folder, slide count and tags; the live objects it holds; who it belongs to, for a deck shared with you; when it was edited; its state — Python paused, or whether it is Saved, Saving…, kept On this device while you are offline, or Needs your decision (a local account's decks are Saved on this device); and the card's menu.

Selecting many. In the list, each deck you own has a box; in the grid, Select puts one on each card, and Done puts them away. Shift with a press — or Shift Space on a box — selects every deck from the last one you pressed; Esc lets go. A bar rises at the foot, named by its count — 3 selected — with:

• Move to folder — one of your folders, Remove from folder, or New folder…
• Tag — type a tag, and it is added to each deck's own.
• Duplicate — a copy of each.
• Export — one .quodra.json file a deck.
• Move to trash — and the toast's Undo brings the whole set back.

Decks shared with you cannot be selected: filing and throwing away are their owner's to do.

Dragging one of your decks onto a folder in the sidebar files it — and the whole selection, if the deck is part of one.

If nothing matches, the list says Nothing here matches.; an empty library says No presentations yet — make one, or start from a template or a sample. with New presentation and Browse templates beside it.

A small Updating pill appears next to the heading while the cloud reconcile is running. Your device's own copy paints first, so the library is never waiting on the network. Whether your work is saved is said under your name at the foot of the sidebar — see Your account.

Your first technical deck#

A new account sees Your first technical deck beside the samples on Home, with five steps and a count (2 of 5):

1. Create a deck
2. Add an equation that computes
3. Add a chart bound to a table
4. Add a circuit or a scientific object
5. Present it or share it

The steps are not checkboxes. Each ticks when the thing itself happens: a deck in your library, an equation whose calculation has a result, a chart reading a table, a circuit or scientific object on a slide, a presentation started or a deck shared. The first unfinished step is drawn as the current one; pressing an unfinished step opens your latest deck (or makes one) with the editor's Insert palette already on the guide for it. A finished step reads as text with a check mark. Once your library holds three decks, the checklist becomes one line above Recent — Your first technical deck · 2 of 5 done · Next: Add an equation that computes — whose button starts that step.

Hide checklist (on the line, Not now) removes it for good; a toast says the guides stay in the editor's Insert palette under Guides. When the fifth step ticks, it shows once more in its done state with a Close button. The record travels with your account, so a step done on one device is done on the next, and it never appears for an account whose library already holds three decks with technical objects.

The walk-through is Your first deck.

Shared with me#

Shared with me in the sidebar opens the Library's tab of that name: in Personal, the decks other people have added you to; with a team chosen at the top of the sidebar, the team's decks that others made — as cards and rows like your own. Each says whose it is and what you may do — Shared by Marco D. · can edit, or · can view. A deck you can edit opens in the editor; one you can view opens the read-only view.

Its menu offers what your access allows: Open, Rename… and Tags… where you can edit, Make a copy, and Export JSON. Filing a deck into a folder and moving it to the trash are left to its owner. Before anyone has shared anything, the tab says Nothing shared with you yet — when someone adds you to a deck, or to their team, it lands here.

Folders#

Folders live in the Folders group in the sidebar. Before you have any, it reads "Folders you make show here."

• New folder — the + button beside the label. Type a name and press Enter; Escape cancels.
• Rename folder and Delete folder — the pencil and bin that appear on a folder row.
• Each row carries a count of the decks filed in it. Click a folder to open the Library filtered to it; click it again to see every deck.

Deleting a folder never deletes decks. They simply become unfiled, and the toast tells you how many moved.

File a deck from its card menu: Move to folder, then pick a folder — the one it is already in is marked with a tick. Remove from folder appears once a deck is filed, and New folder… creates one without leaving the menu. You can also drag a deck onto a folder, or file several at once from the Library's selection.

Tags#

Tags are labels you file decks under, and they travel inside the deck.

• Add or edit tags — the deck card's kebab menu, then Tags…. Type them comma-separated. Duplicates fold together case-insensitively, you get up to twelve per deck, and each is trimmed to forty characters.
• Filter — press a tag on a card, and the Library narrows to it, as a chip that takes it away again; on Home, it opens the Library narrowed to it. From eight decks, the Library's Tags filter lists every tag your decks carry.
• Search and the Library's filter match tags as well as titles.

A sample's field is a tag too, so a copy of a sample arrives tagged with its field — and Home's samples follow the field most of your decks carry until you choose one.

Search#

Search — the field near the top of the sidebar, or ⌘K (Ctrl K) anywhere on the home — finds:

• Presentations, by title, tag and folder.
• Slides, by their names and the sections they sit in — Bode plot, Results — in every deck you can open, including ones this device has never opened.
• Objects inside your presentations: an equation by its source or its variables' names, a heading by its words, a parameter by its variables, a chart, table, circuit or molecule by its title or caption, and anything you have named. Equations are shown typeset. Objects are found from three letters.
• Samples and templates: a sample by its title, field, level or a slide's name; a template by its name or field.
• Commands: New presentation, Import a file…, presenting the deck you edited last, each studio, the views, New folder…, switching to Light or Dark, and more.

How it behaves:

• Before you type, it shows your five most recent presentations and every command. Once you type, the kind you are on counts what it found — All 8 — and each row shows its mark, or a slide's number, before its words.
• ↑ and ↓ move the highlighted row; Return opens what it names — a presentation, a slide or an object on its slide, a sample (nothing is saved until your first edit), a template as a new deck — or runs a command; ⌘Return (Ctrl Return) presents a presentation, a slide or a sample from there.
• Tab and ⇧Tab step through All, Presentations, Slides, Objects, Samples and Commands; Esc closes Search and puts the keyboard back where it was.
• While it is still searching inside your presentations it says so. A search that finds nothing says what it searched and offers New presentation, which opens New at Blank.

Sort and layout#

In the Library:

• Sort — the menu on the right of the heading offers Last edited, Name (A→Z), and Most slides.
• Layout — Grid view and List view, the two buttons beside the sort menu.
• Select — in the grid, puts a box on each of your cards; see the Library.

New#

New opens one sheet for every way to start: the sources down the left in three groups — Presentation (Blank, Template with its count, Sample with its count, Import a file), Object (Circuit, Molecule) and With an assistant (Your assistant, with a green dot when one is connected) — the chosen source's choices on the right under a heading and a line, and along the foot Save to, Cancel and a button named for what it will make. It opens on the source you used last on this device — Template the first time — or on the one a card asked for.

Save to files a new deck, layout or import straight into one of your folders. The studios wear their plan's tag while your plan does not include them, and choosing one opens the plan instead.

From the keyboard: ↑ and ↓ move between the sources, Return runs the button — on a size, a layout or a starter, with that one chosen — and Esc closes.

Imports always arrive as a new deck rather than overwriting one, and any Python inside an imported deck is held until you trust it. If a file only half-converts, an Import review listing what was skipped shows before the deck opens.

Deck cards#

Every card shows a real preview of the deck's cover — drawn by the same renderers the editor uses, not a stored screenshot: the slide you chose with Use as cover in the editor's slide rail, or else the deck's first slide that computes (an equation that calculates, a chart drawn from a table, a circuit, a molecule, a spectrum…), or else its first slide. Under it: the title, when it was edited, the slide count, whose it is if it was shared with you, an icon and a number for the three or four kinds of live object the deck holds most of, its tag chips, and its folder. Click the cover or the title to open it, on the slide you were last on.

A deck whose Python this device has not trusted yet — an imported one, or one shared with you — says Python paused on its cover until you trust it in the editor.

A deck saved before counts existed shows none, and its first slide, until it is next saved.

The kebab menu on the card carries:

• Open
• Rename… — edit in place; Enter commits, Escape cancels
• Tags… — the comma-separated tag line
• Duplicate — makes "Title (copy)"
• Export JSON — downloads a .quodra.json file of the deck
• Move to folder, with Remove from folder and New folder…
• Move to trash

On a deck shared with you, the menu offers only what your access allows — see Shared with me.

Templates & samples#

Templates & samples in the sidebar lists the five layouts under Templates — 5 · on every plan — each drawn as a sketch of its layout, with its name, the field it suits and its slide count; a layout that needed a plan would say so there. Clicking a layout creates a deck from it and opens it.

Under them, Samples — 18 lectures in six fields: a pill for each field (All fields first), and All levels, Undergraduate and Graduate on the right. Each card shows the lecture's signature slide, its title, its field, level and slide count, and its live objects in one line — ƒ 10 · code 8 · table 6 · chart 6. The field you choose becomes the one Home's samples come from. Opening a sample writes nothing until your first edit; the card's menu, beside its title when you point at it, offers Open a copy and Export JSON. See Templates & samples for what is in each one.

Studios#

The Studios label in the sidebar opens a page with the three studios, each wearing its plan's tag while your plan does not include it:

• Circuit Studio — New circuit; your three latest circuits, each drawn, with where it is linked into a deck and when it was edited (All circuits for the rest); and a starter to begin from, one press each.
• Molecule Studio — your latest molecules, drawn; the six starter molecules; and New molecule.
• Matter Lab — your decks that hold its objects, each with what it holds (crystal 4 · phase 1 · XRD 1) and Open in Matter Lab; while none do, the deck it would open over (your latest, or a new one when the library is empty); and its ten modes, from Crystal & lattice to Field.

Assistants#

Quodra has no AI model of its own. Assistants is where you connect one you already use, such as Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor, through Quodra's MCP server: it reads and edits your presentations with your own permissions, and its edits land in the same revision history as yours.

• Connected — each token you pasted into an assistant, with when it was created and when it expires, and each app you approved when it asked to connect; beside each, when it was last used and, where Since yesterday is on, how many changes it made this week. Revoke ends either at once.
• Connect another — three cards: copy the endpoint, create a token (30 days, or a week if you choose it under New tokens last in Settings › Assistants & API), then Copy connection details and paste them into your assistant. The token is shown once and never kept in your browser.
• What assistants changed — where Since yesterday is on: a table of each deck an assistant edited, when and what, with Review in history.
• Things to ask it — three prompts to start from, each something an assistant can do today through Quodra's tools; press one to copy it.

Trash#

Move to trash does not destroy anything. The Trash view lists the decks of yours you have thrown away, with the date and slide count, and two actions per row: Restore puts a deck back in your library, Delete forever removes it for good. An empty bin says Trash is empty.

Settings#

Settings has a list of its own, which takes the sidebar's place: ‹ Settings goes back to where you were, the search box finds any setting by its name or by what people call it (press / to reach it), and the pages come in groups:

• Account — Profile (your name, and your email address: a new one takes effect when you open the link sent to it), Sign-in & security (your password, which asks for the current one, and whether Google is linked), and Preferences (Dark or Light, the product tour, the keys Home answers to).
• Making — Editor (how new decks start — size, template, packages — and how the editor behaves: units, snapping and the grid, proportions, spelling, smart quotes, equation numbers, significant figures, when cells run and for how long, and how a talk starts; see the editor), Studios (what a new circuit, molecule or crystal starts with, Matter Lab's lengths, and the Materials Project key, kept in this browser and cleared when you sign out) and Sharing & export (who can open a new deck, how long your plan keeps a deck's history and how many revisions a deck may keep, a version kept when you present, and what an export starts with: the mark, PDF notes pages, file names, and an imported PowerPoint's size).
• AI & assistants — Ask Quodra where it is on for your account, Assistants & API (what is connected, with Revoke, connecting another, and how long new tokens last), and Connected services.
• Workspace — for a team: General & members (its owner adds and removes members; a member sees the list) and Security & policies.
• Billing & data — Plan & billing (your plan, seats on Teams, your receipts and where they go, academic status, what your plan opens, and every plan) and Privacy & data (Usage analytics, error reports, where Quodra runs, every deck in one file or each as PowerPoint and PDF in a .zip, and deleting your account, which asks you to type your address first). See Account & privacy.

Each page says Changes save as you make them, and Saved just now after one. Search (⌘K) finds settings too: each opens its page with the setting in view. On a phone, Settings is a list; a page opens under ‹ Settings.

Your account#

The row at the foot of the sidebar shows your initials and your name, and under the name whether your work is saved:

• All changes saved — everything has reached the cloud.
• Saving… — a change is on its way.
• Offline — saved on this device — your changes are kept here and go up when the connection returns.
• Couldn't sync — retrying — the cloud refused or failed; hovering shows why, and Quodra keeps trying.
• A deck needs your decision — two copies of a deck disagree; open it to choose.
• Saved on this device — a local account, whose decks live in this browser.

Its menu starts with your email address (and not verified beside it if it still needs confirming, with a dot on the menu's button), then offers Verify your email when relevant, Change your name, Change email and Change password, which open their place in Settings, Plans and billing on a cloud account, Appearance, Send feedback on a cloud account, and Sign out.

Signed out, the row offers Sign in and Create an account instead — and until you sign in, decks stay on the device you made them on.

Appearance#

Appearance in the account menu chooses Dark or Light. Search's Switch to Light (or Dark) and Settings › Preferences › Theme do the same, and Preferences adds Match system, which follows your computer as it changes. The choice is kept on your account and in this browser, and the editor and the studios follow it.

Settings › Preferences also holds:

• Density: Compact fits more rows in the Library, the inspector and the sidebar.
• Around the slide: the stage behind a slide, dark or light whatever the theme.
• Dates and numbers: how the studio writes them, for example 6 Oct 2026 or 2026-10-06, 1,234.56 or 1.234,56.
• Language: UK or US English, which also sets the clock, 14:05 or 2:05 PM.
• Accessibility: reduce motion, single-key shortcuts on or off, focus rings after a click, larger text on Home, the Library and Settings, and live changes announced to a screen reader.
• Starting up: where Quodra opens (Home, the Library or the deck edited last), and, if you belong to a team, whether new decks always go to Personal.