Installation

PDF Studio has no backend, so "installing" mostly means choosing how you open the app. Pick one of the four options below.

Option 1 — Use it in the browser (recommended)

Nothing to install. Open the live app and drop in a PDF.

This is the zero-setup option: the app, its PDF engine, OCR engine, and (optionally) the on-device AI all run in your browser. Your files never leave your machine.

Option 2 — Install the PWA

PDF Studio is a Progressive Web App:

1. Open the live app in Chrome, Edge, or Safari.
2. Use your browser's Install / Add to Home Screen option.

The installed app gets a fullscreen, offline-capable window — and on phones the tool rail docks to the bottom of the screen with thumb-reachable icons. Your session still autosaves locally and resumes where you left off.

Option 3 — Docker self-hosting

Zero backend, so self-hosting is one command. Images publish to GHCR on every release:

docker run -d -p 8080:80 --name pdf-studio ghcr.io/kayforkind/navigatorslab-pdf-studio:latest
# → http://localhost:8080

Or with docker-compose:

docker compose up -d
# → http://localhost:8080

Or build the image yourself from the repo:

git clone https://github.com/Kayforkind/NavigatorsLab-PDF-Studio
cd NavigatorsLab-PDF-Studio
docker build -t pdf-studio .
docker run -d -p 8080:80 pdf-studio

The container serves the static dist/ build behind nginx — your documents still never leave the machine running it.

Air-gapped use

Serve dist/ on an internal network and point the AI/OCR model loaders at internal mirrors. The app makes no network calls for document data, so it works fully offline after the first load.

Option 4 — Build from source

git clone https://github.com/Kayforkind/NavigatorsLab-PDF-Studio
cd NavigatorsLab-PDF-Studio
npm install
npm run dev        # http://localhost:5199
npm test           # test suite
npm run build      # → dist/ (relative base: works at domain root, subpath, or CDN)

Stack: TypeScript · React 19 · Vite · pdf.js (render) · pdf-lib (write) · Tesseract.js (OCR) · WebLLM (AI) · vite-plugin-pwa. Zero backend.

Good first issues are labeled good first issue — see CONTRIBUTING.md.

The CLI and MCP server

v1.1.0 added two agent-native interfaces in packages/ that reuse the exact same content-stream engine as the app — no new parsing code, no network calls, document bytes never leave the machine:

npm install
npm run build:packages

Then run the CLI with npx pdfstudio … from the repo root, or make it global with npm link -w packages/cli and call pdfstudio anywhere. The MCP server lives at packages/mcp/dist/index.js after the build.

• Full reference: CLI · MCP server