fireform-pitch 🔥

The pitch materials for FireForm: an open-source "report once, file everywhere" system that gives first responders their time back. FireForm is a recognized UN Digital Public Good and 1st-place winner of the Reboot the Earth hackathon.

What's here

File	Description
fireform-story.html	A self-contained HTML slideshow that tells the FireForm story and ends with a live, embedded demo of the actual product.
present.command	Double-click launcher that serves the deck over local http (required for the live demo's microphone/transcription to work).

The slideshow

fireform-story.html is a single, dependency-free HTML file: no build step, no install. It walks through one fire from call to aftermath, surfaces the "hidden second shift" of redundant paperwork, introduces FireForm as the fix, and closes by embedding the running frontend so you can demo the product live.

Slide flow:

1. Title: Report once. File everywhere.
2. 02:47, the call (Engine 14, structure fire)
3. 03:02, on scene (the rescue)
4. 05:10, back at the station (the fire's out, the shift isn't)
5. The hidden second shift (one incident, many agencies)
6. What it costs (hours per shift, per responder)
7. Meet FireForm (the solution)
8. How it works (speak once → local AI → auto-fill every form)
9. Since Reboot the Earth (the challenge, the 6-month / ~6-call monthly Salesforce mentorship, where we are now, DPG status, what's next)
10. Live demo: embedded FireForm frontend

Presenting it

For the story slides only, just open the file in any browser:

open fireform-story.html        # macOS
# or double-click it in your file explorer

To demo the live product (with working voice transcription), serve the deck over http instead of opening it as a file: double-click present.command, or:

./present.command               # serves on a free port and opens the browser

Why: the last slide embeds the real frontend, and the product records from the microphone for transcription. Browsers block microphone access for a cross-origin iframe when the page is opened as a file:// URL, so a double-clicked deck can't transcribe. Serving over http://localhost fixes it. The deck detects this and warns you on the demo slide if you're on file://.

Navigation: ← / → or space to move between slides, Home / End to jump to the first/last slide, or click the dots at the bottom. The on-screen ‹ › buttons work too.

Wiring up the live demo (last slide)

The final slide embeds the FireForm frontend in an iframe so you can demo the real product inside the deck. It runs a small preflight when you reach it and shows three status pills in the demo bar (Mic, Frontend, Whisper) so you can see at a glance what's ready and what isn't.

To make the full live demo (including transcription) work:

1. Serve the deck over http (not file://) so the Mic pill goes green:

   ./present.command

2. Start the frontend dev server in fireform-frontend (turns Frontend green):

   cd ../fireform-frontend
   npm run dev

3. Start the backend + Whisper (turns Whisper green, this is what actually transcribes the audio); see the FireForm repo:

   make init && make fireform        # API on :8000, Whisper on :9000

4. Advance to the last slide. It auto-loads the renderer at http://localhost:5173 (the default electron-vite dev server port). If the frontend isn't reachable, the slide shows a preflight checklist instead of a blank frame; fix what's red and click Retry.

5. If your renderer serves on a different port, edit the URL in the bar at the top of the demo slide and click Load.

Transcription not working? It needs all three pills green: the deck served over http (mic), the frontend up (the record button), and the backend + Whisper up (the actual speech-to-text). The most common miss is opening the deck as a file: the Mic pill turns red and a warning strip explains the fix.

Note: the iframe embeds the Vite renderer (an http:// URL), not the Electron shell itself. Vite's dev server doesn't set frame-blocking headers by default, so it embeds cleanly. If the server is down or unreachable, the slide shows a short helper with the command to start it.

Editing the slide text

You don't need to touch the HTML to reword slides: edit slides.txt and refresh the deck in your browser (it must be served over http, i.e. launched with ./present.command; if you open the raw file it falls back to the built-in text).

Format:

• key: your text, one line per field (e.g. s4.title: The fire's out.|The shift isn't.)
• *stars* → orange highlight, | → line break, 🔥 keeps its flicker
• chips: items separated by |; cards:/flow: items separated by || with Title :: body split by ::
• Lines starting with #, or blank/removed lines, keep the deck's built-in wording

File	Description
slides.txt	All editable slide copy and photo slots (sN.image). Edit + refresh; no build step.
images/	Drop your own photos here to replace a slide's built-in graphic (see images/README.md).

Visuals

Story slides 2–9 each have a FireForm-style graphic built in; they mirror the real app's palette, components, and flow (the dispatch map, the agency fan-out, the record → JSON → filled-PDF pipeline, the app window, etc.). To use a real photo instead, drop a file in images/ and point its sN.image line in slides.txt at it; until then (or if the file's missing) the built-in graphic shows. The location map slot (s2.image) is already pointed at images/incident-map.png, just save your map screenshot there.

Tips for a clean demo

• Launch with ./present.command (not a double-clicked file) whenever you plan to demo the live product; otherwise the microphone is blocked and transcription won't work.
• Start npm run dev and the backend (make fireform) before you begin presenting, so all three preflight pills are green and the last slide is warm when you reach it.
• Present in fullscreen for an edge-to-edge story.