ShowPrompt is a local cue and confidence-monitor system for live events, broadcast, sport, worship and theatre. Run it on one laptop and put timers, cues and production information on any screen on your network.
ShowPrompt is a browser-based confidence monitor and production cue system. It gives presenters, talent and crew a clear, shared view of what is happening on a show — countdown timers, running orders, cue messages, production states and instructions — on any screen, in real time.
It runs entirely on your own equipment. One machine — a laptop is plenty — runs a small local server. Operators open controller pages to drive the show. Display pages run fullscreen on comfort monitors, talent screens, the wings, or anything with a browser. Everything stays in sync over your local network the instant a button is pressed.
There is no internet connection required, no account to create, no subscription to log into, and no dedicated hardware to buy, rack or maintain. If a device has a web browser and is on the same network, it can be a ShowPrompt screen.
ShowPrompt covers six purpose-built modes — Conference, Talent, Broadcast, Matchday, Worship and Theatre — each one shaped around how that kind of production actually runs.
On most live productions, time and cues are still managed with whatever is to hand — a phone stopwatch, hand signals from the back of the room, a scrap of paper, or shouting down a comms channel. It works, until it doesn't. A speaker overruns. A presenter misses a cue. The crew and the talent are working from different information.
The professional alternative has always been dedicated cue and timer hardware: capable, reliable, and expensive — often hundreds or thousands of pounds per system, plus cabling, training and a flight case to move it around. For a single conference room, a church, or a small production team, that is hard to justify.
You can start for free. The Free tier gives you a high-quality countdown timer and attention flash between one controller and one display — enough for rehearsals, simple shows, or to try before you buy. Paid licences cost less than an hour of most cue-hardware hire.
It sets up in minutes. Install Node.js once, then it is a double-click on Start ShowPrompt and the dashboard opens in your browser. No commissioning, no configuration files, no learning curve for the crew.
It is reliable by design. Everything runs on your own network with no dependency on venue Wi-Fi or an internet connection. Display screens reconnect automatically if a link drops. There is no cloud service that can go down mid-show.
It scales without surprises. The Venue tier runs unlimited local displays across a whole site — any device with a browser can join.
It is private. Nothing leaves your network. No accounts, no telemetry, no data sent anywhere. What happens on the show stays on the show.
ShowPrompt has three parts: a server, one or more controllers, and one or more displays. They all run in an ordinary web browser.
A small program on one laptop. Holds the live show state.
The operator's pages. Drive timers, cues and the running order.
Fullscreen screens for talent, crew and comfort monitors.
The server is the single source of truth. When an operator presses a button on a controller, the change is sent to the server, and the server instantly pushes it out to every connected display. This happens over a live connection, so the timer on a talent screen ticks in step with the operator's screen — there is no lag and nothing to refresh.
Because the server runs on your own machine and everything talks over your local network, ShowPrompt keeps working whether or not there is internet in the building. Display pages also reconnect on their own if a connection is interrupted, so a brief network hiccup never means a blank screen during a show.
Every mode shares the same calm, dark interface and the same instant sync — what changes is the toolset, built around how that production actually runs. Run whichever mode you need, or more than one at once.
Count down or count up, with quick presets and custom time entry. The timer turns amber at your warning threshold and red at zero, with an optional automatic end-message.
One button throws a bright full-screen flash on every display — an instant attention-getter when a speaker isn't watching the clock.
Build the show as a list of segments with planned durations. One tap advances to the next — and can auto-load the timer with that segment's length. Built for high-pressure rooms.
One-tap preset cues — STANDBY, GO, WRAP UP, HOLD and more — plus custom messages, speaker notes and current/next item, all shown large and clear.
Save the full show state — timers, running order, cues, notes and settings — as a named file, and reload it any time. Set a recurring event up once and bring it back in seconds.
Upload an event or sponsor logo to appear discreetly on every display — your branding on the output, ShowPrompt's own branding untouched.
Full broadcast countdown with TX clock, tally and streaming destinations. Talent countdown display. Pro tier.
The three specialist venue modes — stadium presentation, church services and software cue lights — plus multi-room use and unlimited local displays.
Automatic reconnection, keyboard shortcuts for fast operation, a connected-display count on the controller, a wall clock on every screen, and a clean dark interface for any gallery or backstage.
Three command-room features that turn ShowPrompt from a cue system into a live production command centre. The producer who needs to see everything. The operator who needs an instant escape hatch. The timing engine that tells you whether you’re on schedule.
A dedicated read-only show-overview page for producers, directors and show callers. It auto-detects whichever mode is active and shows:
No controls, just clarity. Open it on a tablet at the production desk, or on a second monitor next to your operator. The dashboard card is labelled Producer.
Every controller (Conference, Broadcast, Matchday, Worship, Theatre) now has a six-button recovery strip just under the header. Built for the moments when shows go sideways.
| HOLD | One-tap freeze of every running timer in the current mode. Sends a HOLD banner to every display. Tap again to release. |
| DELAY +X | Opens a popover: +1, +2, +5 or +10 minutes. Pushes the active timer back by that amount — the whole schedule slides. |
| SKIP | One-tap. Advances the run order to the next segment without firing. |
| EXTEND +X | Same popover as Delay, but adds time only to the current segment’s timer rather than pushing the schedule. |
| BLACKOUT | Press-and-hold for 1.5 seconds (button fills with red). Sends a clean black screen to every display in this mode. Press-and-hold again to restore. |
| CLEAR ALL | Press-and-hold for 1.5 seconds. Wipes every active prompt and message in this mode. |
Add a planned duration to each item in your run order, advance into the first segment, and ShowPrompt calculates drift in real time. The banner above your run-order shows one of three states:
The banner also shows the projected end time, recomputed every five seconds against current wall-clock. The same indicator appears on Producer Mode, so the producer sees what the operator sees.
Smart timing is fully backwards compatible. Items without a plannedDuration contribute nothing to the calculation, and the banner stays hidden until at least one item has a planned duration and you’ve advanced into the run order. Works on Conference, Broadcast, Matchday and Worship runs. Theatre uses scenes rather than a linear run order, so smart timing doesn’t apply there.
ShowPrompt ships with a Bitfocus Companion module that turns any Stream Deck (or other Companion surface) into a physical control panel for live show recovery. Built for the moments when the operator’s hand needs to find the right button without thinking.
$(showprompt:timer_remaining), $(showprompt:current_segment), $(showprompt:drift_minutes), $(showprompt:projected_end), plus per-mode score/state values.The module ships with ShowPrompt in the companion-module-showprompt folder. To install it into Companion:
~/Library/Application Support/Bitfocus Companion/modules-dev/%APPDATA%\Bitfocus Companion\modules-dev\~/.config/Bitfocus Companion/modules-dev/companion-module-showprompt folder into modules-dev.npm install inside that copied folder.modules-dev, it stays there for every show. Companion auto-loads it on startup. You only need to redo this if you wipe your Companion config.The fastest way to get started is the Stage Manager preset set. Open Companion’s Presets tab, find ShowPrompt → Stage Manager, and drag the buttons onto an empty page. Then customise as you go — presets are starting points, not constraints.
Typical Stage Manager layout on a 15-button Stream Deck:
[NOW: panel] [◀ PREV] [NEXT ▶] [Drift: 4m] [STAND BY] [START 04:22] [STOP ] [RESET ] [⚡ FLASH] [GO] [WRAP UP] [CLEAR ] [HOLD ] [BLACKOUT] [SKIP]
Variables on the labels update live: $(showprompt:current_segment) shows the current run-order item, $(showprompt:timer_remaining) ticks down on the timer button, $(showprompt:drift_minutes) shows whether you’re ahead or behind plan.
The Recovery preset is six panic buttons designed to sit on a Stream Deck Pedal or a dedicated row of buttons that’s always reachable mid-show:
[⏸ HOLD] [⏭ SKIP] [DELAY +5] [EXTEND +2] [⚫ BLACKOUT] [✖ CLEAR ALL]
HOLD and BLACKOUT toggle on the same button (press to activate, press again to release). DELAY and EXTEND fire a fixed +5 / +2 minutes from a button — for variable amounts, use the action’s dropdown to pick 1, 2, 5 or 10 minutes per button.
One Companion instance can drive multiple Stream Decks — have the producer’s Stream Deck show high-level state (current segment, drift, recovery buttons) and the operator’s Stream Deck show the detailed cue panel. Both connect to the same ShowPrompt server, both see the same live state.
Companion supports a wide range of control surfaces beyond Stream Deck — X-Keys, Loupedeck, MIDI controllers, OSC over network, and direct keyboard shortcuts. Once you’re configured against ShowPrompt, all those surfaces work the same way: actions, variables and feedbacks behave identically. No additional ShowPrompt configuration needed.
Four tools that turn ShowPrompt from a control surface into a complete production workflow — QR codes for fast display setup, CSV import for spreadsheet-built rundowns, a server-side show log for post-show reports, and a live display preview for the operator.
Open Settings in ShowPrompt and scroll to the Display QR codes section. Every display type — Conference, Broadcast, Talent, Matchday, Worship, Theatre — has its own scannable QR. Point a phone or tablet camera at the QR, tap the link that appears, and the display opens fullscreen on that device. No typing IP addresses, no fiddling with URLs, no walking back and forth to dictate a number. Especially useful for getting crew tablets and backstage phones live quickly.
Most AV professionals build rundowns in Google Sheets or Excel. ShowPrompt now meets you there.
On the Conference, Broadcast, Matchday or Worship controllers, look for the 📋 Import from spreadsheet button in the bottom-right. Click it, paste your rundown directly from the spreadsheet, hit Replace run order. ShowPrompt detects whether you're using tabs or commas, whether there's a header row, and parses durations in either mm:ss or seconds.
Expected columns:
1:30, 0:45, 90 (seconds)You get a live preview of the parsed items before importing, and a warning count for any rows that don't parse cleanly. Pairs perfectly with the smart timing engine — planned durations from your spreadsheet drive drift calculation automatically.
ShowPrompt now keeps a server-side timestamped log of everything that happens during a show:
Open Settings → Show log and you can:
Every controller now has a 📺 Preview displays button in the bottom-right. Click it and a modal opens showing live thumbnails of every relevant display for that mode — e.g. on the Conference controller you see the Conference Display + Talent Display side-by-side.
The thumbnails are the actual display pages rendered at half scale inside iframes. They’re fully live — if a cue fires, you see it in the thumbnail immediately. Read-only (so accidental pointer-clicks don’t fire cues) — the operator goes to the actual display device to interact with it.
Why it matters: stops the operator having to walk to each display to check what’s on it. The producer can also use this view on their own laptop to see the whole show at a glance without needing access to the operator’s controller.
No time-limited trial. The Free tier is permanently free; the paid tiers add modes, outputs and scale. A licence key is activated in Settings.
ShowPrompt is built specifically to be the thing that doesn't let you down at 19:59:50. Here is what it does, what each piece is for, and how the design protects you when something goes wrong on the night.
One laptop runs a small Node.js server. That server holds the entire show state — every timer, cue, score, running order, cue list, scripture reference and director message — in memory. Every controller and every display is a browser page connected to that server over your local network using a WebSocket — a persistent two-way connection. When you press GO on the controller, the change goes to the server, the server updates its state, and every connected display gets the new state in the same heartbeat. There is no cloud round-trip, no third-party service, and no internet involved during a show.
Once installed, ShowPrompt runs entirely on your venue's Wi-Fi or wired network. A dropped internet connection mid-show is not your problem — the server, controllers and displays only need to see each other. We have run shows in stadiums where the public internet was offline for hours; ShowPrompt didn't notice.
If a display loses Wi-Fi for a moment, it shows a small red Reconnecting… badge and silently retries every three seconds. As soon as the network returns, it re-registers with the server and the live show state is restored instantly. The operator does not need to refresh anything.
The server pings every connected client every 15 seconds. If a display vanishes silently — a tablet's battery dies, a cable is unplugged, a kiosk PC sleeps — it is removed from the connected list within 30 seconds, so the dashboard's display count stays honest.
State is held in the server's memory while the show runs — fast, predictable, no disk I/O between cues. Save Show writes a snapshot to disk on the server (covering every mode: Conference, Broadcast, Matchday including teamsheets, Worship, Theatre including scenes and cue lists). Load Show restores it. Running timers always reload paused so you decide when the show starts.
The dashboard has a red Restart show button that wipes every input back to defaults — timers, cues, scores, run orders, notes, teamsheets, theatre cues, countdowns — in a single confirmed action. Your licence and event logo stay put. Useful between events or when you want to start clean fast.
Each display can set its own number (#1, #2…) so multiple identical displays show up distinctly in the dashboard. Conference and Talent displays also expose a Size cycle (S/M/L/XL) so a wall-mounted screen can be set to make the timer fill the screen with no operator intervention. Both choices are remembered per browser — once set, they stick.
Activation is verified online once — no internet check during a show, ever. If your subscription lapses and you happen to be online, paid features keep working for a one-month grace period (so a paperwork problem on a Monday doesn't ruin a Friday matinée). Locked modes appear greyed in the dashboard, not hidden, so you can always see what you'd gain by upgrading.
There is no account to forget, no password to lose, no usage tracking. The only data that ever leaves your machine is the one initial licence validation when you activate a key — and that monthly online check for paid tiers. Everything else, including the actual show, is entirely on your hardware.
ShowPrompt is the data layer for live shows. It tells screens what to display. What you do with those screens is up to you — and there are a lot of options:
licence.json from the ShowPrompt folder somewhere safe so you can restore it on another machine in seconds.ShowPrompt sets itself up the first time you run it, then starts in seconds after that. You will need the ShowPrompt folder — the one containing the Start ShowPrompt launcher — and a few minutes the first time. Install Node.js once, then it's just a double-click.
ShowPrompt runs on Node.js, a free, standard piece of software. Go to nodejs.org and download the LTS version, then run the installer and click through. This is the only thing you install by hand, and only once per computer.
Put the ShowPrompt folder somewhere easy to find — the Desktop or Documents is fine. Open the folder and double-click the launcher: Start ShowPrompt.command on Mac, or Start ShowPrompt.bat on Windows.
The first time, it sets ShowPrompt up automatically — this takes a minute or so and only happens once. After that it starts in seconds.
A small status window opens showing the addresses for every page, plus your network IP, and ShowPrompt opens the dashboard in your browser automatically. Leave that window open for the whole show — closing it stops ShowPrompt. To shut down cleanly when you're done, just close the window.
http://localhost:3000.ShowPrompt runs on the Free tier straight away with no key needed — you can skip this step entirely if Free covers what you need. Pro and Venue are unlocked with a licence key, which looks like this:
SHWP-PRO1-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXTo activate it:
http://localhost:3000 and click Settings (top-right of the dashboard).Your subscription is verified online when you activate — it only takes a second — and the tier badge updates across every page. The licence is saved, so you only activate once per machine; to license another machine, activate the same key there too.
Single machine (simplest): open a display page in a second browser window on the same laptop, drag it to your external monitor, and press F for fullscreen. Feed that monitor into your screen or vision-mixer chain as normal.
Over the network: on any other device on the same network, open http://[YOUR-IP]:3000/ using the IP from the ShowPrompt status window, and choose the display you need.
From the dashboard you can open any mode. Each mode has a controller (for the operator) and a display (for the screens your team watches) — for example /conference-controller.html and /conference-display.html. Talent has a display only. Settings (/settings.html) holds licence activation, show files, the event logo and network info.
Set a time with a preset or custom value and press Start. Build the running order as a list of segments with durations — advancing a segment can auto-load the timer. Push cues from the preset chips or type your own, send speaker notes, and use the Flash button when a speaker needs to look up. On the Free tier, Conference provides the timer and flash; Pro unlocks the rest.
| Space | Start / pause the timer |
| F | Flash the display screen |
| [ ] | Previous / next running-order segment |
| 1–8 | Send preset cue messages |
| Esc | Clear the current cue |
| ← → | Previous / next slide |
Start the TX clock when you go on air, set the live camera with the tally, choose the production state (LIVE, VT, OOV, REPLAY, BREAK…), cue graphics and send director messages to the talent display. Each state shows in its own colour so it reads at a glance. Build a show running order for the gallery to follow, and use the streaming destinations panel to track which platforms you're live on (YouTube, Facebook, Twitch, LinkedIn, Instagram — toggle each as you go live, with an optional URL and manual viewer count for the team to see).
Pick one of nine sports — Football, Rugby, Cricket, Basketball, American Football, Ice Hockey, Netball, Field Hockey or Tennis. Switching sport cascades everything: the period names, the clock direction (count-up for football/rugby, count-down for basketball/hockey/American football, no clock for cricket/tennis), the score-step buttons (+1 for football, +1/+2/+3 for basketball, +3/+5/+7 for rugby, +1/+4/+6 for cricket, etc.) and the available cues. A short rules strip under the selector explains the format. Use 👥 Squads to paste in teamsheets (one player per line, with a "Bench:" header to mark substitutes) and fire fast substitutions during the match — click OFF on a pitched player then ON on a bench player and the cue is composed and pushed automatically.
Pick a tradition — Christian, Islamic, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist or Multi-faith — and the controller's terminology, cue chips and run-of-service presets all adapt to that tradition. Set a pre-service countdown so the team knows how long until you're live. Run the order of service, push the scripture / Quran / Torah / sutra reference to the screens, and fire cues to the AV and livestream volunteers (GO LIVE, ADHAN, TORAH READING, MEDITATION, etc — they change with the tradition).
Designed for DSM workflow. Each department (LX, Sound, Flys, Stage, FOH — and you can add more like Pyro or Followspot) has its own numbered cue list. Paste a cue list with one cue per line in the format 12: Blackout and step through it during the show. Each channel's light shows the current cue number with a Standby (red) and Go (green) state. Channels can be marked as technical or stage cues to keep crew and cast cues visually separated. Structure your show with acts and scenes via the Edit Scenes button — group cues with ## Act 1 / Scene 2 headers in the paste, and the Prev / Next scene buttons jump every channel to that scene's first cue. Run multiple named countdowns in parallel — House Open, The Half, Beginners, Show Start, Interval — each starts and runs independently.
You can also run the show as grouped cues. The Cue Book lets you build cue points — a moment in the script that calls cues across several departments at once (e.g. LX 16, Sound 27, Flys 4, FX 2). One Standby readies all of them on every screen, then a single, unmissable GO fires the whole group together and logs it to the show report. Independent per-department cueing and grouped cue points work side by side — drive each department on its own numbered list, fire a grouped GO for a big sequence, or mix both in the same show.
The talent display needs no operating — just open it fullscreen on the presenter's screen. It mirrors the timer, current cue, next item and any director message, with nothing else to distract. Each talent display can set its own display number (#1, #2, etc) so multiple show up distinctly in the dashboard, and a Size cycle (S / M / L / XL) scales the timer and cue text — set it to XL on a Free-tier setup and the timer fills the screen.
Every controller has 📺 Open Display and ⛶ Fullscreen buttons in the header. Open Display launches the display in a separate sized window — drag it to your second screen and press F there for fullscreen — so you can set up everything from one laptop. Each display has its own display number and (Conference + Talent) a size cycle; they're remembered per browser so a wall-mounted display always loads the same way.
Once a show is set up, open the Shows button in the Conference controller (or Show Files in Settings) to save it, and reload it any time — running timers are always saved paused. Save files now cover every mode: Conference, Broadcast, Matchday (including teamsheets), Worship and Theatre (including scenes and cue lists). In Settings → Event Logo, upload a PNG, JPG or SVG to brand every display; it never changes ShowPrompt's own look.
Click the ❓ Guide button in any controller's header to toggle hover-help on. While it's on, controls with built-in help get a dashed orange outline, and hovering them shows a small explainer popup. Click the button again to turn it off. The state is remembered per browser, so leave it on for staff learning the system and turn it off once they know it.
The dashboard and most displays are installable as a Progressive Web App. On iPad / iPhone Safari, open the dashboard and tap Share → Add to Home Screen — ShowPrompt appears with an icon and launches without browser chrome. On Android Chrome the menu offers an Install app option. This is purely cosmetic: ShowPrompt runs the same way over the local network either way.
The first time you start ShowPrompt it needs an internet connection for about a minute to set itself up. If that step was interrupted, close the status window, check you're online, and double-click Start ShowPrompt again — it will finish setting up and then open as normal. (Only this first-run setup needs internet; running a show does not.) If it still won't start, make sure Node.js is installed from nodejs.org.
Check both devices are on the same network, and that the IP address matches the one in the ShowPrompt status window. Make sure that status window is still open — if you closed it, ShowPrompt stopped. If the venue network is unreliable, use the single-machine method instead — server and display on one laptop, output sent over HDMI.
Confirm the ShowPrompt status window is still open and running. Display pages reconnect on their own within a few seconds — no refresh needed. For controllers, a refresh reconnects immediately.
Close the ShowPrompt status window to stop it, then double-click Start ShowPrompt again. The new IP address appears in the window — update the URL on any devices connected over the network.
That mode or feature belongs to a higher tier. Free covers the basic Conference timer and flash (1 display). Pro adds the full Conference mode, Broadcast and Talent, with up to 4 displays. Venue adds Matchday, Worship and Theatre, with unlimited displays. Activate a Pro or Venue key in Settings to unlock the rest.
Something else is using port 3000. Close the other program, or open server.js and change const PORT = 3000 to another number such as 3001, then use that port in the address.
If Start ShowPrompt reports that Node.js can't be found, install it from nodejs.org (the LTS version) and, on Windows, make sure "Add to PATH" stays ticked during installation. Then close the status window and double-click Start ShowPrompt again.
Check the key is entered exactly as supplied, including the SHWP- prefix and all dashes. Keys are not case-sensitive. If a correct key is still refused, contact your supplier — the key may not match this version.
ShowPrompt puts a professional cue system on a laptop you already own — across conference, broadcast, sport, worship and theatre. Start free, and upgrade when the show calls for it.