PDF Chef

Open-source PDF tools for private documents.
Merge, split, convert, sign, clean, OCR, compare, and secure PDFs in your browser with no server upload for PDF processing.

Use the app · Privacy model · Toolkit · Run locally · Download · Contribute

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Why PDF Chef

Online PDF tools often ask users to upload sensitive documents before doing anything useful. PDF Chef is built around the opposite promise: serve the app, then process the document locally in the browser.

That matters for contracts, invoices, tax forms, school records, IDs, resumes, internal reports, legal drafts, and every other file users should not casually upload to a random conversion server.

Private by default No PDF file upload for normal tool workflows.	Open source MIT licensed and inspectable on GitHub.	Browser local PDF.js, pdf-lib, jsPDF, JSZip, and Tesseract.js run client-side.
No account wall Use the public app without signing in.	Practical toolkit 29 tools covering daily PDF work.	Static deploy Hosted on Cloudflare Pages, portable to static hosts.

Privacy-first by design

PDF Chef is not a cloud conversion pipeline. It is a static web app with client-side PDF operations.

User concern	PDF Chef answer
Will my PDF be uploaded?	No PDF file is uploaded to a PDF Chef server for the core tools.
Where does processing happen?	In the browser on the user's device.
Do I need an account?	No account is required.
Can I inspect the code?	Yes. The project is open source under MIT.
What network requests exist?	The browser downloads app assets, scripts, styles, and workers from the deployed site. User PDFs are handled locally by the app.
Can this be self-hosted?	Yes. Build the Vite app and serve the static output.

Privacy guarantees

• User-selected PDFs stay on the device during normal PDF tool workflows.
• PDF operations are implemented with browser-side libraries instead of a document-processing backend.
• No required login, workspace, or cloud storage account.
• No third-party document conversion API.
• Security-sensitive reports are handled privately through SECURITY.md.
• New contributions are expected to preserve the no-upload model.

Toolkit

PDF Chef focuses on tools people actually need during day-to-day document work.

Arrange	Convert and create	Review and secure
Merge PDFs	Compress PDFs	View PDFs
Split PDFs	PDF to JPG, PNG, WebP	Edit PDF overlays
Reorder pages	Image to PDF	Compare PDFs
Rotate pages	Make PDF from photos	Extract text and OCR
Delete pages	Extract embedded images	View and edit metadata
Extract selected pages		Remove metadata
Add page numbers		Remove annotations
Add watermarks		Sanitize PDFs
Flatten form fields		Sign PDFs
Crop margins		Protect PDFs
Add headers and footers		Unlock PDFs
Remove blank pages		Repair PDFs

Product quality

• Preview-first workflows: compression, signing, watermarking, page numbers, OCR, compare, and conversion flows show visual feedback before export.
• Cleanup tools: remove metadata, annotations, blank pages, and hidden document data.
• Mobile-aware UI: touch-friendly page operations and responsive layouts.
• SEO coverage: each public tool has route-level metadata and sitemap coverage.
• Catalog verification: npm run test:catalog prevents dashboard, route, SEO, and sitemap drift.

Architecture

Browser
  -> React + TypeScript UI
  -> PDF.js for parsing and rendering
  -> pdf-lib and jsPDF for document edits and exports
  -> Tesseract.js for OCR
  -> JSZip for packaged downloads
  -> Local download back to the user

Cloudflare Pages
  -> Serves static HTML, CSS, JS, images, and workers
  -> Does not receive user PDFs for core processing

Tech stack

Layer	Tools
App	React 18, TypeScript, Vite
Styling	Tailwind CSS, lucide-react
PDF runtime	PDF.js, pdf-lib, jsPDF
OCR and assets	Tesseract.js, JSZip
Hosting	Cloudflare Pages
Verification	TypeScript, catalog verifier, production build

Run locally

Prerequisite: Node.js 18 or newer.

npm install
npm run dev

Open the local URL printed by Vite.

Quality checks

npm run lint
npm run test:catalog
npm run build

test:catalog verifies that dashboard tools have matching app routes, SEO metadata, and sitemap entries.

Deploy

The production app is deployed on Cloudflare Pages:

https://pdfchef.dhananjaytech.app/

Build output lives in dist:

npm run build

Download a release

PDF Chef releases include a ready-to-serve static ZIP. This is useful when you want to run the app locally or host it yourself without setting up the development toolchain.

1. Open the latest release.
2. Download pdfchef-<version>.zip.
3. Extract the ZIP.
4. Serve the extracted folder with any static HTTP server.

Quick start:

# Using Python
cd pdfchef
python -m http.server 8080

# Or using Node.js
npx serve .

Then open http://localhost:8080.

Do not open index.html directly from the filesystem. Browser security rules can block module scripts and PDF workers when loaded from file://.

Project structure

components/      React UI, pages, tools, SEO helpers
services/        Browser-side PDF operations
hooks/           Shared React state and PDF handoff helpers
scripts/         Verification and benchmark utilities
public/          Static assets, robots.txt, sitemap.xml
design-system/   Durable product and UI decisions

Roadmap

• More browser-safe PDF cleanup tools
• Stronger automated tests around PDF operations
• Better large-file performance and progress reporting
• Accessibility audits for every tool route
• Optional self-hosting guide

Contributing

Contributions are welcome when they strengthen the local-first PDF model.

High-value areas:

• new tools that preserve the no-upload privacy model
• browser-side performance improvements for large PDFs
• accessibility fixes
• focused tests around PDF operations and route coverage
• documentation that makes privacy and local processing easier to verify

Read CONTRIBUTING.md before opening a pull request.

Security

Please do not open public issues for security-sensitive reports. See SECURITY.md.

License

PDF Chef is open source under the MIT License.