PDF Simplified

Inspiration

Most PDF editors are either bloated professional suites or clunky tools that let you draw a text box on top of a page. Neither is a good fit for someone who just wants to fix a paragraph, replace an image, or put together a one-page document without a steep learning curve.

PDF Simplified is a PDF editor that treats editing and creation the way you'd expect: like editing a document.

What it does

Two main things:

• Edit any PDF - text, images, and layout - directly and visually.
• Create a PDF from scratch using standard page sizes (A4, Letter, Legal, A5), with optional AI help to draft or rewrite content.

Available in English, Arabic, Spanish, French, Hindi, and Chinese.

How we built it

Astro and React on the frontend, Node.js on the backend, and Google Gemini for the AI features.

Challenges we ran into

Getting the editor to feel natural - clicking on text and just typing, moving things around, undo/redo - took the most iterations. PDFs aren't structured like documents under the hood, so making them behave like one is the whole trick.

What's next for PDF Simplified

More editing tools, wider language support, and continued improvements based on how people actually use it.

Built With

• astro.js
• express.js
• node.js
• postgresql
• typescript