Documentation Guides

Hands-on guides covering installation, architecture, accessibility, and common questions. For the full API surface, see the API reference in the README.

Local preview: guide pages load markdown via fetch() and require a server. Run cd docs && npx serve . then open localhost:3000/guides/.

• Onboarding → 90-second start for the full ecosystem — library v1.3.0, pdfnative-cli v1.1.0, pdfnative-mcp v1.0.0, and pdfnative-react v0.2.0. Install + first call for each.
• Quick Start → Install pdfnative and generate your first PDF in Node.js or the browser in under a minute.
• Architecture → Two builders, generation pipeline, module dependency flow, and key design decisions.
• FAQ → Custom fonts, PDF/A variants, encryption, BiDi, browser/Deno/Bun, signatures, workers, and comparison with other libraries.
• Troubleshooting → Fixes for missing glyphs, RTL text appearing backwards, PDF/A validation failures, oversized PDFs, parser errors.
• Accessibility → Tagged PDF, structure tree, /ActualText, PDF/UA, PDF/A — building accessible PDFs that screen readers and archive validators accept.
• PDF/A conformance → PDF/A-1b, 2b, 2u, 3b — full veraPDF conformance with the v1.1.0 Latin font embedding and XMP parity fixes.
• Digital signatures → CMS/PKCS#7 detached signatures — RSA + ECDSA P-256, one-call addSignaturePlaceholder() workflow, Adobe Reader / openssl-cms validation.
• Smart tables → Multi-page tables — auto-wrap, repeated headers, zebra striping, captions, smart auto-fit columns. Planner-driven architecture, byte-identical to v1.1.0 on unchanged input.
• Colour emoji → v1.3.0 COLRv1 colour emoji — opt-in Noto Color Emoji subset, solid + linear + radial gradient layers rendered as native PDF Form XObjects. Monochrome fallback when not registered.
• Streaming output → v1.3.0 true constant-memory streaming — buildDocumentPDFStreamTrue() yields chunks while freeing each part, so the full PDF binary never materialises. Plus fixed-size and object-boundary variants.
• MCP Integration → Use pdfnative from Claude Desktop, Cursor, Continue, and Zed via pdfnative-mcp v1.0.0 — 12 tools (incl. verify_pdf, add_attachment, extract_text), pdfA flag, multi-script lang, and a signed-document workflow.
• CLI → pdfnative-cli v1.1.0 — render, sign, inspect, verify, batch, and emit JSON Schemas from the terminal. Stdin/stdout pipelines, constant-memory streaming, PDF/UA & PDF/A checks, PAdES-T verification, secret-safe signing, and an agent-native --json/E_*/--dry-run contract.
• React → pdfnative-react v0.2.0 — build PDFs declaratively with JSX. A custom React reconciler compiles <Document>/<Table>/<Barcode> on-device to pdfnative blocks. Live-preview hooks, streaming, and a token-frugal DocSpec. React 19 peer dep on the React package only — the engine stays zero-dependency.

Looking for samples?

The repository ships with 32 generator categories producing 187 sample PDFs covering every feature: financial statements, multi-language documents, barcodes, SVG, watermarks, forms, encryption, signatures, streaming, parser, smart tables, and stress tests.

Interactive playgrounds

• MCP tool explorer → Browse the twelve pdfnative-mcp v1.0.0 tools (including verify_pdf, add_attachment, extract_text), copy a ready-to-paste config snippet for Claude / Cursor / Continue / Zed, and generate the same PDFs an AI assistant would receive — all in your browser.
• CLI command builder → Compose pdfnative-cli v1.1.0 commands (render / sign / inspect / verify / batch / schema) interactively — with --watch, --template, --stream-true, ECDSA-SHA256, PAdES-T detection, and one-click presets.
• React renderer → Write JSX in the browser and render a real PDF on-device via pdfnative-react v0.2.0 — components compile to pdfnative blocks with no SaaS round-trip. Loaded from a CDN for the demo; the published package stays zero-dependency at its core.
• Extreme scripts playground → Stress-test BiDi (Arabic + Hebrew + Thai), Tamil deep conjuncts, Bengali & Devanagari reph + ligature chains, and isolated Arabic harakat directly in the browser.
• Medical 800-page Web Worker playground → Generate a synthetic 800-page clinical report off the main thread using a Web Worker. Live progress, streaming output, optional Tagged PDF.

Contributing

Found a typo, an unclear paragraph, or a missing topic? Edit the underlying .md file directly on GitHub and open a pull request. See CONTRIBUTING.md for branch naming conventions (docs/*).