Examples

Recipes for common situations - find your task in the quick reference, jump to the recipe, copy the command. New to the command line? Start with First run.

Quick reference

First run

Never used a command-line tool? Three steps.

1. Open a terminal. macOS: press Cmd+Space, type Terminal, Enter. Windows: open PowerShell from the Start menu.
2. Go to your deck’s folder. If it is on your Desktop:

   cd Desktop
   

3. Check it:

   intern quarterly.pptx
   

intern prints one row per problem:

┌───────┬──────────────────────┬─────────┬────────────────┬──────┬───────────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Slide ┆ Rule                 ┆ Type    ┆ Position       ┆ Id   ┆ Text                              ┆ Message                                 │
╞═══════╪══════════════════════╪═════════╪════════════════╪══════╪═══════════════════════════════════╪═════════════════════════════════════════╡
│ 2     ┆ BULLET_LENGTH        ┆ Body    ┆ (40px, 132px)  ┆ 5    ┆ Our goals for the next quarter... ┆ bullet is 26 words (20-word limit)      │
│ 2     ┆ RIGHT_MARGIN         ┆ Body    ┆ (40px, 132px)  ┆ 5    ┆ Our goals for the next quarter... ┆ right edge at 905.4px (typical 927.0px) │
│       ┆                      ┆         ┆                ┆      ┆                                   ┆                                         │
│ 4     ┆ TITLE_TRAILING_PUNCT ┆ Title   ┆ (28px, 15px)   ┆ 12   ┆ Project Status.                   ┆ title ends with '.' - remove it         │
└───────┴──────────────────────┴─────────┴────────────────┴──────┴───────────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────────────────┘
3 violation(s) (3 error, 0 warning)

• Slide - where the problem is (slide 1 is the first slide).
• Rule - the check that fired; look it up in the Rules reference.
• Type / Position / Id / Text - the offending element: its kind, top-left corner, shape id, and a short text excerpt. All - for a whole-slide problem.
• Message - what is wrong, in plain words.

A clean deck prints No violations found.

Everyday tasks

Check a deck

intern deck.pptx

check is the default action, so the subcommand is optional. Pass a folder to check every .pptx inside it:

intern check slides/

Fix the easy problems

intern fix deck.pptx

Applies every fixable violation and saves a backup as deck.pptx.bak. Alignment, font-size, and whitespace issues are corrected; wording problems are reported for you to handle. The Rules reference marks which is which.

Preview before fixing

intern fix deck.pptx --dry-run

Lists what fix would change without touching the file.

Focus on one slide

intern check deck.pptx --slide 4

Slides count from 1. Deck-wide checks (like “all titles line up”) need every slide, so drop --slide for the full picture.

Skip a slide that is intentionally different

Section dividers, the title slide, a deliberately unique layout - exclude a slide by adding a line to its speaker notes:

intern: disable                        # skip every rule on this slide
intern: disable TITLE_Y, DUPLICATE_TITLE  # skip only these rules

The slide is dropped before those rules run, so it skews no baselines either.

Loosen or tighten alignment

intern check deck.pptx --threshold 5   # more forgiving
intern check deck.pptx --threshold 1   # pixel-perfect

Alignment tolerance in pixels (default 2). Anything off by less is treated as fine.

Turn rules on or off

intern check deck.pptx --disable ALL_CAPS,TITLE_TRAILING_PUNCT  # skip these
intern check deck.pptx --rules TITLE_Y,TITLE_X_WIDTH            # run only these

Rule ids come from the Rules reference; a typo is rejected with an error. To make settings permanent, use a config file (below).

Teams & CI

A shared team standard

Commit an .intern.toml to your project - everyone who runs intern there picks it up:

threshold_px = 3
disable = ["ALL_CAPS"]

[rules.TITLE_LENGTH]
max_words = 8

Full reference: Configuration.

Make a rule advisory instead of blocking

Every rule is an error by default and fails CI. To keep a rule’s findings visible without failing the build, set its severity to warning:

[rules.ALL_CAPS]
severity = "warning"

intern check exits non-zero only when an error-severity violation exists.

Your personal defaults

Settings you want on every deck you lint, regardless of project, go in ~/.config/intern.toml. A project’s .intern.toml wins over it when both exist.

Gate a CI build

intern check exits 0 when clean (or only warnings) and 1 on an error-severity violation - point it at a folder to gate every deck. GitHub Actions, saved as .github/workflows/decks.yml:

name: decks
on: [push, pull_request]

jobs:
  lint:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - name: Install intern
        run: |
          curl -L https://github.com/markusz/intern/releases/latest/download/intern-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.gz | tar xz
          sudo mv intern /usr/local/bin/
      - run: intern check slides/

Feed results to other tools

intern check deck.pptx --output json

JSON output nests violations under each file:

{
  "files": [
    {
      "path": "deck.pptx",
      "violations": [
        {
          "rule_id": "TITLE_Y",
          "slide": 2,
          "element_type": "Title",
          "element_position": "(28px, 47px)",
          "element_id": 12,
          "excerpt": "Project Status",
          "message": "title 34.2px lower than most slides",
          "severity": "error"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Pipe it through jq - for example, list every slide with a title-alignment problem:

intern check deck.pptx --output json \
  | jq -r '.files[].violations[] | select(.rule_id == "TITLE_Y") | .slide'