All work

04 — Case study

Folio

Convert documents without uploading them.

My part
I designed and built all of it
Year
2026
Status
Live
The Folio converter: drop a Markdown file to get a Word or PDF document

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.

  1. 01Your fileRead into browser memory
  2. 02Conversionmarked · docx · jsPDF · pdf-lib
  3. 03DownloadSaved locally

Open the network tab during a conversion and watch nothing leave the page.

Engineering decisions

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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