04 — Case study
Folio
Convert documents without uploading them.

The problem
Most online converters upload your file to a server you cannot see. For a contract, a spec or personal notes, that is a reason to hesitate.
Folio does the work in the browser tab. The file is read into memory, converted there and handed back as a download. There is nothing to upload.
What it does
Markdown to Word
A real .docx with heading styles, shaded tables and code blocks.
Markdown to PDF
A paginated A4 or Letter layout with margins, page breaks and print typography.
Merge and split PDFs
Reorder and combine files, or pull out page ranges like 1-3, 5.
Images to PDF
Drop PNG, JPG or WebP files, reorder them and export one PDF.
Keyboard first
A Cmd/Ctrl+K command palette and shortcuts, so it feels like a desktop utility.
How it works
Everything happens in the browser. Markdown is parsed into a syntax tree, compiled into a Word file or laid out into PDF pages, and returned as a download. There is no network request in between.
- 01Your fileRead into browser memory
- 02Conversionmarked · docx · jsPDF · pdf-lib
- 03DownloadSaved locally
Open the network tab during a conversion and watch nothing leave the page.
Engineering decisions
- 01
Privacy by design, not by promise
With no server in the loop there is nothing to leak. A policy can change; an architecture with no upload cannot.
- 02
Real Word files, not HTML in disguise
Markdown is compiled to OpenXML through a syntax tree, so the result opens as a proper document with real styles.
- 03
Several libraries, one flow
Word, PDF layout and PDF editing use different tools, but every format follows the same drop, convert, download path.
Stack
- React 18
- TypeScript
- Vite
- Tailwind CSS
- Framer Motion
- docx
- pdf-lib
- jsPDF