The Spectacle core API is available at https://github.com/FormidableLabs/spectacle/blob/master/README.markdown.

After downloading the boilerplate, your first order of business is to open terminal and run npm install

Next run rm -R .git to remove the existing version control.

Then, to start up the local server, run npm start

Open a browser and hit http://localhost:3000, and we are ready to roll

On Windows you might get an error saying

'NODE_ENV' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

Thus, modify the npm scripts in package.json to properly set the NODE_ENV environment variable:

...
"scripts": {
    ...
    "build": "SET NODE_ENV=production & webpack --config webpack.config.production.js",
    ...
    "start": "SET NODE_ENV=development & node server.js"
},
...

Building the dist version of the project is as easy as running npm run build

If you want to deploy the slideshow to surge, run npm run deploy