DemoDiva

Live product demos are almost always ad-hoc: the presenter improvises a path through the product, sometimes gets lost, sometimes triggers a bug, and the result is highly dependent on who's presenting and how much they've rehearsed that particular scenario. DemoDiva is an attempt to make demos reproducible without making them feel scripted.

The core idea is narration-over-action authoring: you describe what you want to happen in a YAML script — "click the Revenue chart, wait for the tooltip, say 'notice that Q3 is 18% ahead of plan'" — and DemoDiva drives the product UI and the presenter's talking points in sync. The script is the source of truth; the presenter follows the console rather than remembering a rehearsed sequence.

Operator console

The presenter runs a TUI operator console that shows the current step, the next few steps, timing cues and any notes attached to the current action. Keyboard shortcuts advance, pause or skip steps. The console is deliberately minimal — it needs to be glanceable in the corner of your eye while you're talking.

A separate audience view shows only what the audience is meant to see: the product itself, overlaid with any highlighted elements or spotlight effects called for in the script. The two surfaces are kept in sync over a WebSocket connection, so the presenter and the projected screen can be on different machines.

YAML script format

The script format is human-writable and diff-friendly. Steps have types (navigate, click, speak, spotlight, pause), and each step can carry timing hints, fallback actions and presenter notes. Because the script is YAML, you can version-control it, review diffs between demo versions and regenerate it from a template for different audiences.

Why it matters

Sales demos are often the highest-leverage hour in a deal cycle. A tool that makes them more reproducible and less dependent on individual heroics has obvious commercial value — and it's a surprisingly interesting engineering problem.