Jake Wharton describes how he built a small Kotlin/Native CLI tool called dir-stepper to manage live coding steps during his KotlinConf talk. Instead of using git commits (which caused painful interactive rebases), he created a directory-based system where each step is a numbered subdirectory. A current-step marker file tracks progress, and the tool copies files from the appropriate step directory into the working directory. The tool is integrated into IntelliJ IDEA as an External Tool with keyboard shortcuts, allowing invisible step transitions during the presentation. The tool supports next, prev, and reset directions and is open source on GitHub.
Table of contents
Making the wrong choiceThe problem, definedExtending IntelliJ IDEAOn-disk formatThe binaryIntelliJ configuration545 Impressions