PDFCraft – PDF Processing & Automation Kit

A self-hosted PDF vault — upload and organize documents into collections, annotate with highlights and notes, share with your team, and lock it down with WebAuthn/TOTP, all backed by Django and PostgreSQL.

Stack

• Django 5 — Python backend, auth, and admin — server-rendered with HTMX for interactivity.
• HTMX + Alpine.js — Dynamic UI without a separate frontend build step or SPA framework.
• Tailwind CSS — Utility-first styling for the document grid, viewer, and collections UI.
• PostgreSQL / SQLite — Postgres for production, SQLite for zero-config local development.

Features

• Smart collections — Organize PDFs into collections instead of one long flat document list.
• Annotation & highlights — Mark up PDFs with highlights and notes directly in the browser.
• WebAuthn & TOTP — Lock the vault down with passkeys or two-factor auth, not just a password.
• Team sharing — Share individual documents or whole collections with teammates.

Install

git clone https://github.com/yashthakur1/PdfDing_8.git pdfcraft
cd pdfcraft
poetry install

Environment

DEBUG=True
SECRET_KEY=your-super-secret-development-key
DATABASE_TYPE=SQLITE

Walkthrough

1. Install backend dependencies

Use Poetry (recommended) or pip to install the Django backend's dependencies.

poetry install
# or
pip install -r requirements.txt

2. Configure the database

SQLite works out of the box for local dev. For Postgres, create the database yourself first, point the POSTGRES_* env vars at it, then run migrations.

# .env for Postgres
DATABASE_TYPE=POSTGRES
POSTGRES_NAME=docvault
POSTGRES_USER=youruser
POSTGRES_PASSWORD=yourpassword
POSTGRES_HOST=127.0.0.1
POSTGRES_PORT=5432

python manage.py migrate

3. Build the frontend and run the server

Install and build the Tailwind/HTMX frontend assets, then start the Django dev server from the pdfding directory.

npm install
npm run build
cd pdfding
python manage.py runserver

Gotchas

• DEBUG=True is for local dev only — set it to False and configure a real SECRET_KEY before production.
• Switching to Postgres means creating the database yourself first — the app won't create it for you.
• The Django server expects frontend assets already built (npm run build) — skip that step and the UI serves unstyled or broken pages.

Why not just build it yourself?

If you just need to view or convert a couple of PDFs, this is overkill — accounts, collections, and WebAuthn add real setup (Django + Postgres + a frontend build) for something a simple PDF viewer does with zero setup. This kit is for teams that want a private, self-hosted document vault.

Links

GitHub

License: Not specified — the source repo ships no LICENSE file. Confirm terms with the author before redistributing.