PDF tools that stay in your browser.
Merge, split, convert, and protect documents — fast, private, and open source.

Try the live demo →

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Why Pdeefy

Private by default	Core tools run entirely in the browser via Web Workers — your files never leave your machine in Live Demo Mode.
Dual-mode	Use the hosted demo instantly, or connect a local FastAPI backend for OCR, Office export, and deep compression.
Modern stack	React 19, TypeScript, Tailwind v4, and pdf-lib — built to extend, not to lock you in.

Dual-mode architecture

flowchart TB
  subgraph demo ["Live Demo Mode · GitHub Pages"]
    A[Browser] --> B[Web Workers + pdf-lib]
    B --> C[Merge · Split · Rotate · Protect · …]
  end

  subgraph power ["Local Power Mode · localhost"]
    A --> D[FastAPI backend]
    D --> E[OCR · PDF→Office · Deep compress]
  end

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Mode	Where it runs	Best for
Live Demo	GitHub Pages, 100% client-side	Everyday PDF edits, no install
Local Power	Your machine + FastAPI backend	OCR, DOCX/XLSX export, Ghostscript compression

Features

Always available — no backend, no upload

• Merge, split, extract, delete & reorder pages
• Rotate, flatten, fill & sign, add text & images
• Password protect & unlock
• JPG / PNG → PDF, Markdown → PDF
• Watermark (and more in the registry)

Local Power Mode — requires the backend

• PDF → Word (DOCX)
• PDF → Excel / PowerPoint
• OCR (Tesseract)
• Deep compress (Ghostscript / PyMuPDF)

Quick start

Docker

Requires Docker Desktop (or Docker Engine + Compose).

git clone https://github.com/edvardhov/pdeefy.git
cd pdeefy
docker compose up -d

Open http://localhost:5173/ — frontend and backend (OCR, Office export, deep compression) are ready. The app auto-detects the backend at http://localhost:8000/api/health.

Stop the stack:

docker compose down

Production-style local build (static frontend via nginx on port 4173, no hot reload):

docker compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.prod.yml up -d --build

Open http://localhost:4173/

Manual setup (without Docker)

Frontend (Live Demo locally)

git clone https://github.com/edvardhov/pdeefy.git
cd pdeefy
npm install
npm run dev

Open http://localhost:5173/

Backend (Local Power Mode)

cd backend
python3.11 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate   # Windows: .venv\Scripts\activate
pip install -r requirements.txt
uvicorn app.main:app --reload --port 8000

The app auto-detects the backend at http://localhost:8000/api/health. Override the URL in Settings if needed.

Full backend setup: backend/README.md

GitHub Pages + local backend

The live demo runs entirely in the browser for core tools. Run docker compose up -d (backend only is enough) to unlock Local Power Mode from the hosted site — the app polls http://localhost:8000/api/health from your browser. Works in Chrome, Edge, and Firefox; Safari may block HTTPS → http://localhost mixed content.

Stack

Layer	Tech
Frontend	Vite · React 19 · TypeScript · Tailwind CSS v4 · Shadcn/ui
PDF (client)	pdf-lib · Web Workers · pdfjs-dist
Backend	FastAPI · PyMuPDF · python-docx · pytesseract

Versioning

The app version lives in package.json (0.1.0). The frontend embeds it at build time; the backend reads the same value from package.json (or APP_VERSION in Docker).

See CHANGELOG.md for release notes.

Cut a release

1. Update version in package.json and add an entry to CHANGELOG.md.
2. Commit and push to main.
3. Tag and push — this creates a GitHub Release via .github/workflows/release.yml:

git tag v0.1.0
git push origin v0.1.0

The tag must match package.json exactly (e.g. tag v0.1.0 ↔ "version": "0.1.0").

Deploy

Pushes to main deploy to GitHub Pages via .github/workflows/deploy.yml. Set the repository Pages source to GitHub Actions.

Brand assets

Logo SVGs (light / dark icon + wordmark lockups) live in public/. The app uses the full lockup on large screens and the square icon on mobile, swapping with the active theme.

License

MIT · © Edvard Hovhannisyan