Birbla

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  • Hacker News
  • OP, you already know your website will end up in the graveyard, I just don't understand how anyone can still put up the same exact template as the last 100K viby websites released, it's literally a prompt away to have an original design, type that prompt, PLEASE.
    by pixel_popping
  • kindly improve the SEO to not end up in the vibecoded graveyard
    by vedant_getbags
  • Point well taken. I appreciate it. It is being worked on .
    by pdfmergely
  • I cannot be the only one expecting a github repo on the website, right?
    by kewop
  • Ofc not the only one, and the expectation is reasonable. A repo is coming, and for a tool like this it arguably should have been there from the start. Thank you for the nudge.
    by pdfmergely
  • Love the idea, but would help trustworthiness if the design looked a little less vibe-coded.
    by steveharrison
  • Which library did you compile to WASM for this? I doubt this is a from scratch implementation of full PDF
    by fp64
  • A fair question. There is no from scratch PDF engine here. It is @cantoo/pdf-lib, a maintained fork of pdf-lib, running client side in a Web Worker, with WebAssembly handling the heavier parts such as encryption. I am happy to go deeper on any part of it.
    by pdfmergely
  • Would you consider open-sourcing the client-side code? For privacy-focused PDF tools, that seems like the easiest way to make the “no upload” claim more trustworthy.
    by pmb_developer
  • Where is the company registered? None of these details are on your website.
    by sscaryterry
  • Fair point, I'll add an About/Contact page with who's behind it.

    It's a small solo project; there's no company entity yet, but also no account or server, so nothing of yours is collected — files are processed in your browser and never leave your device (verifiable in the Network tab).

    by pdfmergely
  • To me, it looks like a design generated by AI. It had exactly the same vibe as those kinds of sites I see all the time.
    by hasudon7171
  • I appreciate the directness, and you are right.

    The design has not yet earned trust, and that is on where I am working in.

    For a tool people hand documents to, looking trustworthy and being trustworthy need to line up. Thank you for saying it plainly.

    by pdfmergely
  • Question about merging: How do you handle merging multiple pdf that have forms? Are the form fields renamed to prevent form field name clashes?

    And what pdf toolkit do you use?

    by jimjimjim
  • Our merge is page-level, not form-aware. We copy the pages (including the visual appearance of form fields), but we don't merge the PDFs' AcroForm dictionaries.

    As a result, form fields typically aren't fillable after merging, and field name conflicts aren't an issue, so we don't rename fields.

    We use @cantoo/pdf-lib (a maintained fork of pdf-lib) running entirely client-side in a Web Worker, so all processing happens locally in the browser and no files leave the user's device.

    by pdfmergely
  • Why is it that everyone now duplicates/vibe-codes PDF tool websites? It seems that there is one new each week for about half a year now with none providing any outstanding features over the others.
    by gettalong
  • theyre the AI todo app: sufficiently complex and mildly useful. will fail when real use case outstrips its minimum depth.
    by cyanydeez
  • This one's website (and a dead comment replying to you) suggests that processing the PDF in the browser, rather than uploading to a server, is a point of differentiation.

    However, there are older tools that do this, such as BentoPDF (which is also open source) [1].

    [1]: https://www.bentopdf.com/

    by jamessb