What it does Banana Slides is a self-hostable web app that generates presentation slides from a sentence, an outline, or per-page descriptions. It parses uploaded PDFs and Word docs for source material, lets you upload reference images to lock in a visual style, and exports to PPTX, PDF, or narrated MP4 video. The whole pitch is “Vibe PPT” — you describe what you want changed, and it redraws the page.

The interesting bit The engine underneath is “nano banana pro,” an image generation model that can apparently render prompt-specified text accurately and follow style references. That matters because most AI slide tools give you uneditable image dumps; Banana Slides is explicitly trying to export real, layered PPTX files you can open and tweak. The README shows a comparison table positioning itself against NotebookLM’s slide deck feature — no page limits, post-generation editing, and no watermark.

Key highlights

• Three starting modes: one-liner topic, structured outline, or detailed per-page descriptions
• Natural-language revision: “make page 3 a case study” or “swap this for a pie chart”
• Box-select editing with overlay, replace, and smart-erase modes for generated images
• Exports to editable PPTX (beta), PDF, or AI-narrated video with subtitles and Ken Burns effects
• Docker Compose deployment; one-click hosting template via Rainyun
• OpenAI OAuth integration so Codex can handle text and image generation without manual API keys

Caveats

• The “editable PPTX” feature is marked beta and actively iterating; issue #121 tracks progress on clean background separation and precise cutouts
• Frontend load speed and multilingual support are listed as only partially complete
• The project is tightly coupled to nano banana pro for its core generation quality; if that model’s access or pricing shifts, the value proposition wobbles

Verdict Worth a look if you regularly build decks from documents and hate template prisons, but only if you’re comfortable self-hosting and treating the editable export as a work in progress. PowerPoint power users who need pixel-perfect control should wait for the PPTX layer to mature.