How I Built a Free iLovePDF Alternative That Never Uploads Your Files
As developers, we handle sensitive documents all the time—invoices, API documentation, and confidential contracts. Yet, when we need to quickly merge, split, or compress a PDF, we usually resort to uploading our sensitive data to third-party cloud servers like iLovePDF or Adobe.
As a Cyber Security student, that always felt wrong to me. I wanted a tool that was lightning fast, completely free, and most importantly: processed everything entirely in the browser.
So, I built FluxTools, a suite of 60+ developer utilities and document analyzers that never touch a backend server. Here is how I built the PDF processing engine using React, Vite, and pdf-lib.
The Architecture: Moving the Backend to the Frontend
