Ametrin

Re:Typst 0.15.0 on Tuesday June 16, 2026 @04:32AM (#48552293)

Typst is a really good fit if the layout model works for your invoices and you want to keep it self-hosted. I’m building PDFBolt as a hosted api, and pricing was one of the first things I wanted to keep simple. For invoices and other recurring pdfs, I think teams mostly want to know what the monthly cost will be, not do math on every render

Re:Ask HN: What are you working on? (June 2026) on Monday June 15, 2026 @05:53AM (#48538974)

I’m working on PDFBolt, a PDF generation API for developers.

https://pdfbolt.com

It’s for the boring pdf jobs every SaaS eventually gets: invoices, reports, certificates, contracts, labels, that kind of thing. You send html, a url, or a template with JSON data, and get a PDF back.

Last week we shipped the Node SDK. Right now I’m working on the Python SDK and tightening up the docs

Re:Ask HN: Is there a way to render URLs to PDFs on Android? on Monday April 27, 2026 @05:01AM (#47919276)

Easiest is Firefox 'Save as PDF'. If you need more control (custom margins, JS wait, viewport size), PDFBolt has a free URL to PDF tool that runs in mobile browsers without signup

Re:Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (March 2026) on Tuesday March 10, 2026 @05:16AM (#47320815)

Working on PDFBolt (https://pdfbolt.com) - a PDF generation API. You send HTML, a URL, or a Handlebars template with JSON data, get a PDF back. Uses Playwright underneath so modern CSS just works.

Lately been deep in PDF/X print production - PDF/X-1a and PDF/X-4 with ICC color profiles and CMYK conversion. Had to build 11 color space converters on top of PDFBox 3.0. Also shipped an AI template generator where you describe what you need and it creates a Handlebars template with sample data, plus expanded the gallery to 38 pre-built ones.

Right now template management lives in the dashboard - edits auto-create drafts, you can compare any two versions as rendered PDFs and roll back if something breaks. Working on an API so coding agents can create and version templates programmatically.

Show HN: PDFBolt – HTML to PDF API with Git-like template versioning

Posted by Ametrin on Tuesday March 03, 2026 @08:01AM
from the show-hn dept.

https://pdfbolt.com/

Hi HN, I'm Michał. I posted PDFBolt here about a year ago as a basic HTML to PDF API. Since then I've been rebuilding it around the thing that kept bugging me: every time a designer tweaked a layout, it meant a code change, a deploy, and a prayer that nothing broke in production. I wanted templates that live on the server and version themselves, so my API calls stay the same when the layout...

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Re:Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (February 2026) on Monday February 09, 2026 @04:11AM (#46943255)

https://pdfbolt.com

A PDF generation API, Chrome-based. Most of my time lately goes into print production - browsers render everything in RGB but print needs CMYK with ICC color profiles, and getting that conversion right inside the PDF turned out to be a much deeper problem than expected. Got PDF/X-1a and PDF/X-4 working now.

Re:Omnom: Self-hosted bookmarking with searchable, wysiwyg snapshots [... on Wednesday April 16, 2025 @03:48PM (#43709579)

I recently released a Chrome extension that converts webpages to PDF. It's free, but you need to register to get a key. Unfortunately, this solution isn't client-side JavaScript; I'm using an API underneath. To be honest, I mainly created it to promote the API, but if it's useful for people, I might develop it further. Perhaps it could be useful to you in some way. I don't know your requirements, but maybe with this base in the form of this extension, it wouldn't be difficult to add something that meets your expectations, let me know. However, if you want to export a PDF from Ahrefs, for example, I'm afraid that might not be possible; currently, only basic authentication is supported. Unless maybe I could add an option like in my API to pass JavaScript code, but I also doubt that would work because Ahrefs probably has some bot protection.

edit: i forgot the link https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/pdfbolt-web-to-pdf/...

Re:Open source and self hostable/private file converter on Saturday April 12, 2025 @02:42PM (#43666918)

I can recommend https://pdfbolt.com. It is unfortunately not self-hosted but built with privacy in mind. I'm the founder.

Re:Show HN: How I built a SaaS thanks to my wife on Saturday February 01, 2025 @08:08AM (#42898016)

Thank you and all good for you :)

Show HN: How I built a SaaS thanks to my wife

Posted by Ametrin on Wednesday January 29, 2025 @02:24PM
from the show-hn dept.

https://pdfbolt.com/

I’m Michał, and I’d like to share with you the journey I went through with my wife and how, thanks to her, we built our first SaaS, PDFBolt (https://pdfbolt.com). I’ve been a developer for over 10 years. In 2020, I decided to build a side project to learn all aspects of app development—deployment, authentication, payments, frontend, landing pages, etc. While looking for project ideas, I came...

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