Claude helped turn PDF frustration into a working app
A mortgage required 17 separate PDF files, which made checking and tracking documents tedious. Merging everything into one long PDF reduced file switching, but it also made it harder to see where one document ended and another began. The solution was a two-dimensional viewer: scroll sideways through pages inside one file, and scroll vertically to move between different files.
The format adds metadata to a PDF so document boundaries are stored inside one combined file while still staying with normal PDF handling. The new format is called .pdfx, but it can also live inside a regular PDF with metadata. Claude helped build about 80% of the project in roughly 2 hours, shortly before access to the most advanced model ended.
The app is , built with Electron, includes some -style interface work, and still has rough edges.
Key points
- The problem started with 17 mortgage-related PDF documents that were hard to manage separately.
- A single merged PDF helped with file switching but made document boundaries confusing.
- The proposed viewer uses sideways scrolling for pages and vertical scrolling for separate files.
- The .pdfx idea stores document boundary metadata inside a PDF- file.
- Claude reportedly completed about 80% of the project in around 2 hours, and the code is .