Practical guides on generating PDFs from code and AI agents — serverless Chromium, HTML-to-PDF, document automation, and the MCP wedge.
AI agents generate PDFs easily but choke on reading them — the file gets trapped, scanned pages return garbage, and raw page images burn the context window. Here's how a read_pdf MCP tool fixes it.
Read →Yes, ChatGPT can emit a rough PDF through its code sandbox — but it can't reliably render designed HTML/CSS, hand the file to your app, or repeat the output. Here's what works and the durable fix.
Read →wkhtmltopdf was archived and its ancient WebKit fork mangles modern CSS and carries unpatched CVEs — here are the three honest replacements and a concrete before/after migration.
Read →ReportLab, WeasyPrint, or a hosted Chromium API — a practical, honest comparison of fidelity, ops burden, and cost for generating PDFs in Python, with runnable code for each.
Read →Why bundling headless Chromium into a Vercel function causes cold starts, size-limit failures, and missing fonts — and how a Next.js Route Handler that calls a PDF API avoids all three.
Read →Render a React component to a static HTML string with renderToStaticMarkup, then POST that HTML to a PDF API — with real Node/Next.js code and the styling gotchas that actually bite.
Read →A practical guide to print CSS for HTML-to-PDF rendering: @page rules, page-break control, avoiding cut-off content, web fonts, and print colors.
Read →Puppeteer/Playwright, pdfkit/pdf-lib, or a hosted PDF API — a practical comparison of fidelity, ops burden, and serverless pain for generating PDFs from Node.js.
Read →Wire Stripe's invoice.payment_succeeded webhook to Docweave so a branded invoice PDF is generated, stored, and emailed the moment payment clears — with real Node.js code and idempotency handling.
Read →Running headless Chromium in a serverless function fails in ways that are hard to debug: bundle-size limits, cold starts, missing system libraries, and timeouts. Here's why, and the simplest way around it.
Read →A concrete pattern for turning Airtable records into branded PDFs automatically, using an automation script or a webhook to an HTTP step.
Read →A worked comparison of per-page and per-document PDF API pricing, with the exact page-count crossover where one model beats the other.
Read →A buyer's guide to evaluating PDF generation APIs — pricing model, source formats, rendering fidelity, AI-agent support, idempotency, rate limits, and hosted vs self-host.
Read →Give any MCP-compatible agent a generate_pdf tool in one line, npx @docweave/mcp, and see why that beats wiring up raw HTTP calls for PDF generation.
Read →An honest comparison of self-hosting Puppeteer or Playwright versus calling a hosted PDF API — same rendering engine, very different operational cost.
Read →A step-by-step guide to building an HTML invoice template with placeholders, sending it template + JSON to Docweave's PDF API, and avoiding duplicate invoices with idempotency keys.
Read →How Docweave's idempotencyKey stops retries and webhook re-deliveries from generating duplicate PDFs or charging you twice for the same document.
Read →A practical guide to CSS @page rules, break-inside, and header/footer templates for clean, correctly-paginated PDFs from Chromium.
Read →A tool-by-tool guide to generating PDFs from Zapier, Make, and n8n using the same underlying HTTP request to Docweave's API.
Read →A step-by-step guide to building an HTML certificate template with placeholders and rendering it to a polished PDF via the Docweave API.
Read →How to run high-volume PDF generation safely — concurrency limits, retries with idempotencyKey, failure handling, and why per-document pricing changes the math at scale.
Read →Why @page CSS doesn't give you running headers in Chromium-rendered PDFs, and how to use headerTemplate/footerTemplate to add page numbers, titles, and dates correctly.
Read →How Docweave's url source type renders a live web page to PDF, when to use it instead of raw HTML, and the auth/SSRF caveats that trip people up.
Read →A practical guide to getting images, logos, and web fonts to render correctly in generated PDFs — data URIs vs hosted assets, @font-face gotchas, and how Docweave's Chromium renderer handles both.
Read →The pattern for turning database rows into PDFs at scale: query, map to template data, render with a per-row idempotency key, store the result.
Read →Why webhooks and job queues redeliver the same event, how that causes duplicate PDFs and double-billing, and how to use idempotencyKey to make PDF generation safe to retry.
Read →How to turn markdown files (READMEs, docs, changelogs) into PDFs programmatically: convert to HTML with a markdown library, then send that HTML to a PDF API. Includes a working Node example.
Read →Generate your first PDF in minutes.
Get an API key