A fast PDF engine became a no-code product idea
Zerodha made PDF creation much faster by removing from its and using Typst instead. One example was a 2,000-page document that took about 18 minutes with LaTeX but about 1 minute with Typst. Zomato had shared a similar engineering change.
A weekend test of Typst showed that PDFs could be created very quickly without a . The problem is that Typst still requires people to write code, so it is not easy for founders, teams, or marketers who need , reports, or s. Cellystial was built over four months to close that gap.
It offers a template builder plus a REST API, so a layout can be designed once, filled with JSON data, and returned as a PDF quickly. Rust and Typst run behind the scenes.
Key points
- Zerodha sped up PDF creation by replacing with Typst.
- A 2,000-page document reportedly dropped from about 18 minutes in LaTeX to about 1 minute in Typst.
- Typst is fast, but it is code-based and hard for many non-technical users.
- Cellystial adds a template builder and a REST API on top of Typst.
- The practical use case is repeated PDF generation for , reports, s, and similar documents.