Blog
PDFops posts
Why this exists, how to use it, what's coming next. Subscribe via sitemap or just come back — new posts land here as I have something worth writing down.
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The case for deterministic PDF filling
AI can read almost any document now — but the write step, filling an official PDF, shouldn't be a language model if an auditor might ever look at it. Why the extraction wave needs a deterministic, audit-safe fill step underneath it.
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Fill and merge PDFs in your browser — free, no signup (or one API call)
A free in-browser tool to fill PDF form fields and merge PDFs — drop a file, fill or merge, download. The same operations are one curl away the moment you automate them.
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Generating signed contracts from a Tally webhook on Cloudflare Workers
Tally fires the webhook, a Cloudflare Worker fills the contract template via PDFops, stashes the result in R2, and emails the customer a countersigned PDF. ~75 lines of TypeScript, sub-400ms end-to-end, no ops-team round-trip.
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Generating audit-trail PDFs from a Next.js Server Action
Fill the main template, fill a metadata cover page, merge them — two PDFops endpoints chained in one Next.js Server Action. Cover-page-bound audit trail every contractor signature, ~350-500ms end-to-end, ~75 lines of TypeScript.
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Auto-filling a W-9 from a contractor-onboarding webhook on Vercel Edge
Onboarding form → Vercel Edge Function → PDFops fill-form → Vercel Blob, sub-300ms end-to-end. ~60 lines of TypeScript. Same pattern works for I-9s, 1099s, and any AcroForm PDF.
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Monthly PDF bundles on a Cloudflare Cron Trigger
Per-customer statement bundles end-to-end on a Cloudflare Worker — fill, merge, store, email signed link. ~60 lines of TypeScript, fires once a month, no servers.
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Generating invoice PDFs from Stripe webhooks on Cloudflare Workers
The most common SaaS PDF use case, end-to-end on the edge: Stripe webhook → PDFops fill-form → R2 storage, sub-300ms, ~50 lines of TypeScript.
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Getting started with PDFops
30 seconds to a working PDF API call. Two curl commands, the limits, and what's coming next.
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Why I built PDFops
I run several SaaS businesses. Across every one of them, there's a moment when I need to generate PDFs — and every time it's a bigger problem than it should be. So I built it once, as a hosted API.