pdfnative

Pure native PDF generation library — zero vendor dependencies. ISO 32000-1 (PDF 1.7) compliant.

Ecosystem

pdfnative ships as four coordinated packages — pick whichever entry point fits your workflow:

npm install pdfnative                 # library
npm install pdfnative-react react     # React renderer (React 19 peer)
npm install -g pdfnative-cli          # CLI
npm install -g pdfnative-mcp          # MCP server

Detailed docs: CLI guide · MCP guide · React guide · Onboarding cheatsheet.

Highlights

• Zero dependencies — built from scratch in pure TypeScript. Zero runtime dependencies, tree-shakeable, auditable
• ISO 32000-1 compliant — valid xref tables, /Info metadata, proper font embedding
• 22 Unicode scripts — Thai, Japanese, Chinese (SC), Korean, Greek, Devanagari, Telugu, Turkish, Vietnamese, Polish, Arabic, Hebrew, Cyrillic, Georgian, Armenian, Bengali, Tamil, Sinhala, Tibetan, Khmer, Myanmar, Ethiopic
• Thai OpenType shaping — GSUB substitution + GPOS mark-to-base + mark-to-mark positioning
• Arabic positional shaping — GSUB isolated/initial/medial/final forms + lam-alef ligatures
• BiDi text layout — Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm (UAX #9) with glyph mirroring, isolates (LRI/RLI/FSI/PDI), and explicit embeddings (LRE/RLE/LRO/RLO/PDF) including character-level X4–X5 overrides (v1.3.0)
• USE-lite shaping — classifyUseCategory / classifyClusters drive joiner classification across the Devanagari, Bengali, and Tamil shapers, fixing nukta+virama, half-form, eyelash-ra, and ya-phalaa edge cases (v1.3.0)
• Colour emoji (COLRv1) — opt-in Noto Color Emoji subset; solid + linear + radial gradient layers rendered as native PDF Form XObjects; monochrome fallback when not registered (v1.3.0). Variation selectors, ZWJ/ZWNJ, and skin-tone modifiers no longer leave tofu, and glyph /BBox is computed from contour bounds so emoji are never clipped (v1.3.0). Advanced compositing (v1.4.0): COLRv1 sweep (conic) gradients render as native flat-shaded wedges, and PaintComposite separable blend modes (Multiply, Screen, Overlay, Darken, Lighten, …) map to PDF /BM ExtGState; structural Porter-Duff modes fall back to monochrome. Guide →
• Multi-font fallback — automatic cross-script font switching with continuation bias
• TTF subsetting — only used glyphs embedded (dramatic file size reduction)
• Tagged PDF / PDF/A — structure tree, /ActualText, XMP metadata, sRGB OutputIntent (PDF/A-1b, 2b, 2u, 3b with embedded file attachments)
• PDF Encryption — AES-128 (V4/R4) and AES-256 (V5/R6), owner + user passwords, granular permissions
• Free-form document builder — headings, paragraphs, lists (incl. nested / hierarchical bullet & numbered lists, v1.4.0), tables, images, barcodes, SVG paths, form fields, spacers, page breaks, table of contents. Configurable block limit via layout.maxBlocks (default 100 000) for very large reports (v1.3.0)
• Smart tables — multi-page slicing with repeated headers, auto-wrap on column overflow, zebra striping, captions, and smart auto-fit columns (v1.2.0), plus per-cell borders (cellBorders) and vertical alignment (cellVAlign / ColumnDef.vAlign, v1.4.0). Guide →
• Barcode & QR code generation — Code 128, EAN-13, QR Code, Data Matrix, PDF417 — pure PDF path operators (no images)
• SVG rendering — path, rect, circle, ellipse, line, polyline, polygon as native PDF operators, plus <text> elements rendered as upright PDF text with x/y positioning and text-anchor (start/middle/end) support (v1.5.0)
• AcroForm fields — text, multiline, checkbox, radio, dropdown, listbox with appearance streams (ISO 32000-1 §12.7)
• Digital signatures — CMS/PKCS#7 detached signatures with RSA + ECDSA, SHA-256/384/512, X.509 parsing (ISO 32000-1 §12.8). One-call placeholder injection via addSignaturePlaceholder() (v1.2.0). Pluggable native crypto provider (setCryptoProvider() / PdfSignOptions.provider, v1.4.0) for constant-time, hardware-backed signing (node:crypto / Web Crypto / HSM)
• Streaming output — AsyncGenerator-based progressive PDF emission with configurable chunk size, object-boundary page-by-page streaming, and true constant-memory streaming (buildDocumentPDFStreamTrue(), v1.3.0) where the full PDF binary never materialises. One-call streamToFile() drains any stream to disk with back-pressure and AbortSignal support (v1.4.0). Guide →
• Document outline & page labels — nested bookmarks (/Outlines tree, with bold/italic/colour, collapsible nodes via open: false, explicit or outline: 'auto' from headings) and logical page numbering (/PageLabels: decimal, roman, alpha, prefixes, custom start) (v1.4.0). Guide →
• Viewer preferences — PdfLayoutOptions.viewerPreferences controls initial /PageLayout & /PageMode plus the /ViewerPreferences dict (hide toolbar/menubar, fit/center window, display doc title, non-full-screen mode, reading direction, print scaling) — PDF/A-safe (v1.4.0). Guide →
• Font-data validator — opt-in validateFontData() structurally checks custom font modules (SFNT magic, base64 integrity, cmap coverage, glyph-id range, width array, finite metrics) and returns { valid, errors, warnings } (v1.4.0). Guide →
• PDF parser & modifier — read existing PDFs (tokenizer, xref, object parser, FlateDecode inflate) + incremental modification. Read-only PDF/UA structural checker validatePdfUA() (ISO 14289-1: MarkInfo, StructTree, ParentTree, Lang, per-page MCID uniqueness) (v1.3.0). Page-tree manipulation (v1.4.0): mergePdfs(), splitPdf(), extractPages() rebuild a clean object graph (inherited attributes resolved, annotations/signatures optionally dropped, deterministic trailer /ID, bounded-depth copy, 256 MiB output cap via maxOutputSize). Round-trip readers (v1.5.0): getPageLabels() parses /PageLabels back into a typed PageLabelRange[]; getAnnotations() / getPageRef() read page annotations, and PdfModifier.addAnnotation() injects new ones incrementally. Guide →
• Markup annotations — typed annotation model (text, highlight, underline, strikeout, squiggly, square, circle, line, freetext) via buildAnnotation() / buildAnnotationBody(), plus PdfReader.getAnnotations() and PdfModifier.addAnnotation() for round-trip read/write (v1.5.0). Guide →
• Layout debug & inspection — opt-in layout: { debug: true } overlays margin / content / cell boxes for visual layout debugging; inspectDocumentLayout() returns a programmatic per-page block-geometry report. Byte-identical when debug is off (v1.5.0). Guide →
• Math & technical symbols — bundleable math font under lang 'math'; mathematical operators, Greek, arrows, and technical symbols route automatically via script detection (v1.5.0)
• Font-data tooling — pdfnative/tools exposes compileFontData() / parseFontData() to build and introspect font-data modules programmatically (v1.5.0)
• Image embedding — JPEG (DCTDecode) and PNG (FlateDecode) with auto-scaling and alignment
• Hyperlinks — PDF link annotations (/URI) with URL validation, blue underlined text, tagged /Link
• Header/footer templates — configurable PageTemplate with left/center/right zones and {page}/{pages}/{date}/{title} placeholders
• Watermarks — text and image overlays with configurable opacity, rotation, and position (background/foreground)
• Table of contents — auto-generated TOC with internal /GoTo links, dot leaders, and page numbers
• FlateDecode compression — zlib stream compression (50–90% size reduction), zero-dependency, platform-native
• Web Worker support — off-main-thread generation for large datasets
• Tree-shakeable — ESM + CJS dual build with TypeScript declarations
• 95%+ test coverage — 2218+ tests across 93 files, fuzz suite, dual-mode visual-regression suite, performance benchmarks
• NPM provenance — signed builds via GitHub Actions OIDC
• On-device generation — runs in Node, browsers, Workers, Deno, Bun. No SaaS round-trip; documents never leave the calling process unless your application explicitly sends them
• No telemetry, no network calls — verifiable in source. The library never opens a socket, fetches remote fonts, or phones home
• AI client integration — use pdfnative from Claude Desktop, Cursor, Continue, and Zed via pdfnative-mcp — 17 production tools (generate, tables, barcodes, forms, sign, verify, validate, attachments, extraction, inspect, plus page-tree merge_pdfs / split_pdf / extract_pages)
• Command-line interface — render, sign, verify, inspect, and batch-render PDFs from the shell with pdfnative-cli — zero-config, scriptable, agent-native (--json/E_*/--dry-run), ideal for CI/CD pipelines
• React renderer — author PDFs as declarative JSX with pdfnative-react: <Document>/<Table>/<Barcode> components, usePdf/PDFViewer client hooks, on-device rendering with no DOM or headless browser

Installation

npm install pdfnative

Requirements: Node.js >= 22 | Modern browsers | Deno | Bun

Documentation

• 🌐 Website: pdfnative.dev — landing page, live in-browser demo with 10 examples, comparisons, benchmarks.
• 📘 Quick Start: docs/guides/quickstart.md — Node.js, browser, Web Worker, streaming.
• 🏛️ Architecture: docs/guides/architecture.md — modules, builders, generation pipeline.
• ♿ Accessibility: docs/guides/accessibility.md — tagged PDF, PDF/UA, PDF/A.
• ❓ FAQ: docs/guides/faq.md — fonts, encryption, signatures, comparisons.
• 🛠️ Troubleshooting: docs/guides/troubleshooting.md — common pitfalls.
• 🎮 Playgrounds: eight interactive demos at docs/playgrounds/ — extreme-scripts (live BiDi/Indic stress tests), all-scripts (every Unicode script), medical-800 (800-page Web Worker showcase), toolkit (v1.4.0 bookmarks, page labels, viewer prefs, nested lists, cell borders, merge/split/extract), plus cli, mcp and react ecosystem explorers.
• 🧪 Sample PDFs: scripts/generators/ — ~210 sample PDFs across 41 categories (see Sample PDFs below).

Why pdfnative?

pdfnative was designed for teams that need ISO-compliant, production-grade PDF generation with zero supply-chain risk. Here is how it compares to other popular JavaScript PDF libraries:

Data sources: npm registry metadata and official README/documentation for each library as of April 2026. Dependency counts reflect direct dependencies listed in each package's package.json. "—" means the feature is not supported or not documented. Feature claims about third-party libraries are based on their public documentation and may not reflect the latest version — please verify against current releases. Sample PDFs validate with veraPDF (PDF/A) and Adobe Acrobat.

When to choose another library: You need advanced vector graphics (complex gradients, arbitrary transforms), rich interactive form scripting (JavaScript actions), or mature ecosystem integrations with existing toolchains.

When to choose pdfnative: You need zero-dependency PDF generation with ISO archival compliance (PDF/A), accessibility (tagged PDF), AES encryption, digital signatures, multi-script Unicode support — particularly Arabic/Hebrew BiDi and Thai GSUB/GPOS shaping — form fields, barcode generation, SVG rendering, or the ability to parse and incrementally modify existing PDFs.

Quick Start

import { buildPDFBytes, downloadBlob } from 'pdfnative';

const pdf = buildPDFBytes({
  title: 'Monthly Report',
  infoItems: [
    { label: 'Period', value: 'January 2026' },
    { label: 'Account', value: 'Main Account' },
  ],
  balanceText: 'Balance: $1,234.56',
  countText: '42 transactions',
  headers: ['Date', 'Description', 'Category', 'Amount', 'Status'],
  rows: [
    { cells: ['01/15', 'Grocery Store', 'Food', '-$45.00', ''], type: 'debit', pointed: false },
    { cells: ['01/16', 'Salary', 'Income', '+$3,000.00', 'X'], type: 'credit', pointed: true },
  ],
  footerText: 'Generated by MyApp',
});

// Browser: trigger download
downloadBlob(pdf, 'report.pdf');

// Node.js: write to file
import { writeFileSync } from 'fs';
writeFileSync('report.pdf', pdf);

Document Builder

Build free-form documents with headings, paragraphs, lists, tables, images, barcodes, and more:

import { buildDocumentPDFBytes } from 'pdfnative';

const pdf = buildDocumentPDFBytes({
  title: 'Project Report',
  blocks: [
    { type: 'toc' },
    { type: 'heading', text: 'Executive Summary', level: 1 },
    { type: 'paragraph', text: 'This quarter saw strong growth across all divisions...' },
    { type: 'image', data: jpegBytes, width: 400, align: 'center', alt: 'Revenue chart' },
    { type: 'list', items: ['Revenue up 15%', 'Costs down 8%', 'Net profit +23%'], style: 'bullet' },
    { type: 'table', headers: ['Q1', 'Q2', 'Q3', 'Q4'], rows: [
      { cells: ['$1.2M', '$1.4M', '$1.6M', '$1.8M'], type: 'credit', pointed: false },
    ]},
    { type: 'spacer', height: 20 },
    { type: 'heading', text: 'Next Steps', level: 2 },
    { type: 'paragraph', text: 'Focus areas for next quarter include...', align: 'left' },
    { type: 'link', text: 'View full report online', url: 'https://example.com/report' },
    { type: 'barcode', format: 'qr', data: 'https://example.com/report', align: 'center' },
  ],
  footerText: 'Confidential',
}, {
  headerTemplate: { center: 'Project Report', right: '{date}' },
  footerTemplate: { left: 'Confidential', right: 'Page {page} of {pages}' },
});

Unicode Font Support

For non-Latin scripts, register font data loaders (lazy-loaded on demand):

import { registerFonts, loadFontData, buildPDFBytes } from 'pdfnative';

registerFonts({
  th: () => import('pdfnative/fonts/noto-thai-data.js'),
  ja: () => import('pdfnative/fonts/noto-jp-data.js'),
  zh: () => import('pdfnative/fonts/noto-sc-data.js'),
  ko: () => import('pdfnative/fonts/noto-kr-data.js'),
  el: () => import('pdfnative/fonts/noto-greek-data.js'),
  hi: () => import('pdfnative/fonts/noto-devanagari-data.js'),
  tr: () => import('pdfnative/fonts/noto-turkish-data.js'),
  vi: () => import('pdfnative/fonts/noto-vietnamese-data.js'),
  pl: () => import('pdfnative/fonts/noto-polish-data.js'),
  ar: () => import('pdfnative/fonts/noto-arabic-data.js'),
  he: () => import('pdfnative/fonts/noto-hebrew-data.js'),
  ru: () => import('pdfnative/fonts/noto-cyrillic-data.js'),
  ka: () => import('pdfnative/fonts/noto-georgian-data.js'),
  hy: () => import('pdfnative/fonts/noto-armenian-data.js'),
  bn: () => import('pdfnative/fonts/noto-bengali-data.js'),
  ta: () => import('pdfnative/fonts/noto-tamil-data.js'),
  te: () => import('pdfnative/fonts/noto-telugu-data.js'), // v1.3.0
  si: () => import('pdfnative/fonts/noto-sinhala-data.js'), // v1.3.0
  bo: () => import('pdfnative/fonts/noto-tibetan-data.js'), // v1.3.0
  km: () => import('pdfnative/fonts/noto-khmer-data.js'), // v1.3.0
  my: () => import('pdfnative/fonts/noto-myanmar-data.js'), // v1.3.0
  am: () => import('pdfnative/fonts/noto-ethiopic-data.js'), // v1.3.0
  // v1.1.0+ — optional Latin fallback for PDF/A documents with curly quotes,
  // em-dash, ellipsis, etc. (activates automatically when needed):
  latin: () => import('pdfnative/fonts/noto-sans-data.js'),
  // v1.1.0+ — optional monochrome emoji:
  emoji: () => import('pdfnative/fonts/noto-emoji-data.js'),
});

const thaiFont = await loadFontData('th');

const pdf = buildPDFBytes({
  title: 'รายงานประจำเดือน',
  // ... other params
  fontEntries: thaiFont ? [{ fontData: thaiFont, fontRef: '/F3', lang: 'th' }] : [],
});

Supported Languages

Multi-Font (Mixed Scripts)

Generate PDFs with multiple scripts in the same document:

const fonts = await Promise.all([
  loadFontData('th'),
  loadFontData('ja'),
  loadFontData('zh'),
]);

const fontEntries = fonts
  .filter(Boolean)
  .map((fd, i) => ({ fontData: fd!, fontRef: `/F${3 + i}`, lang: ['th', 'ja', 'zh'][i] }));

const pdf = buildPDFBytes({
  title: 'Multi-Language Report',
  headers: ['Date', 'Description', 'Category', 'Amount', 'Status'],
  rows: [
    { cells: ['01/01', 'English text', 'Test', '+100', 'OK'], type: 'credit', pointed: false },
    { cells: ['01/02', 'ข้อความไทย', 'ทดสอบ', '-50', ''], type: 'debit', pointed: false },
    { cells: ['01/03', '日本語テキスト', 'テスト', '+200', '済'], type: 'credit', pointed: true },
  ],
  // ... other params
  fontEntries,
});

Web Worker (Large Datasets)

import { createPDF } from 'pdfnative';

const pdf = await createPDF(params, {
  workerUrl: new URL('pdfnative/worker', import.meta.url),
  threshold: 500, // use Worker above 500 rows
  timeout: 30000, // Worker timeout in ms (default: 60000)
  onProgress: (percent) => console.log(`${percent}%`),
});

For lower-level control, use generatePDFInWorker directly with WorkerGenerationOptions:

import { generatePDFInWorker } from 'pdfnative';
import type { WorkerGenerationOptions } from 'pdfnative';

const options: WorkerGenerationOptions = {
  timeout: 15000,
  onProgress: (percent) => console.log(`${percent}%`),
};

const pdf = await generatePDFInWorker(workerUrl, params, options);

Layout Customization

const pdf = buildPDFBytes(params, {
  pageWidth: 595.28,   // A4 (default)
  pageHeight: 841.89,  // A4 (default)
  margins: { t: 45, r: 36, b: 35, l: 36 },
  colors: {
    title: '#2563EB',           // hex — primary format
    credit: [15, 145, 121],     // RGB tuple [0–255]
    debit: '0.863 0.149 0.149', // PDF operator string [0.0–1.0]
    // ... see PdfColors type
  },
  columns: [
    { f: 0.15, a: 'l', mx: 12, mxH: 12 },
    { f: 0.35, a: 'l', mx: 50, mxH: 50 },
    { f: 0.20, a: 'r', mx: 20, mxH: 20 },
    { f: 0.30, a: 'r', mx: 30, mxH: 30 },
  ],
});

Color Formats

All color values accept three formats:

import { parseColor } from 'pdfnative';

parseColor('#2563EB');           // '0.145 0.388 0.922'
parseColor([37, 99, 235]);       // '0.145 0.388 0.922'
parseColor('0.145 0.388 0.922'); // '0.145 0.388 0.922'

All inputs are validated and normalized before interpolation into PDF content streams, preventing operator injection.

Font Sizes

Customize font sizes for each zone (title, info bar, table header, table cells, footer):

const pdf = buildPDFBytes(params, {
  fontSizes: {
    title: 20,   // Title text (default: 16)
    info: 10,    // Info bar items (default: 9)
    th: 9,       // Table header cells (default: 8)
    td: 8,       // Table body cells (default: 7.5)
    ft: 8,       // Footer text (default: 7)
  },
});

All values are in PDF points (1pt = 1/72 inch). Partial overrides are supported — unspecified keys use defaults.

Building Custom Font Data

Obtaining TTF Files

For Noto Sans fonts, download the raw .ttf file directly from the noto-fonts GitHub repository:

1. Navigate to the font's GitHub repository (e.g., github.com/notofonts/bengali)
2. Find the TTF file under fonts/NotoSansBengali/unhinted/ttf/ (or similar path)
3. Click the file, then click "Download raw file" (or use the raw URL)
4. Save it to fonts/ttf/

No zip download or extraction needed — each TTF is a standalone file you can download directly.

Building the Data Module

Convert any TTF font into an importable data module:

npx pdfnative-build-font fonts/ttf/MyFont.ttf fonts/my-font-data.js

The tool extracts cmap, widths, metrics, GSUB, GPOS, and embeds the raw TTF as base64.

Full colour-emoji coverage (pdfnative-build-emoji-font)

The bundled colour-emoji module (pdfnative/fonts/noto-color-emoji-data.js) ships a lean curated subset to keep the package small. When you need glyphs beyond that subset — up to the full ~3,600-glyph Noto Color Emoji set — a second bundled binary generates a custom data module on demand, so even pdfnative-only users get full coverage without the package ever carrying the ~32 MB source font:

# Download the pinned Noto Color Emoji (SHA-256 verified) and emit every glyph
npx pdfnative-build-emoji-font --download --all --out my-color-emoji-data.js

# …or build from a local TTF, selecting only the glyphs you need
npx pdfnative-build-emoji-font --ttf NotoColorEmoji-Regular.ttf \
  --codepoints "1F600,1F680,2764" --out my-color-emoji-data.js

Select glyphs with --all, --preset, --codepoints, or --ranges, then register the generated module under lang 'emoji'. See the Colour-emoji CLI guide.

Visual PDF Inspection

Generate sample PDFs for all supported languages to visually verify output:

npm run test:generate

This creates ~210 PDF files in test-output/ (git-ignored), organized in twenty-nine categories (including emoji/ and pdfa-latin/ added in v1.1.0, and math/, svg/, debug/, annotations/, tools/ added in v1.5.0). See scripts/README.md for the modular generator architecture.

Financial Statements (per language)

Diverse Use Cases (non-financial)

Alphabet / Character Coverage

PDF/A Conformance Variants

Encrypted PDFs

Sample passwords (for testing only — all documented in scripts/generate-samples.ts):

Document Builder Samples

Compressed PDFs (FlateDecode)

Stress Test PDFs

Edge-Case Stress Tests

Barcode & QR Code Samples

SVG Path Rendering Samples

Form Field Samples

Digital Signature Samples

Streaming Output Samples

PDF Parser & Modifier Samples

Outline & Page Label Samples (v1.4.0)

PDF Manipulation Samples (v1.4.0)

API Reference

Core

Image Support

Link Annotations

BiDi & Arabic/Hebrew Shaping

Barcode & QR Code

SVG Rendering

Markup Annotations

Supported MarkupAnnotation types: text, highlight, underline, strikeout, squiggly, square, circle, line, freetext.

Layout Debug & Inspection

Enable the visual overlay via layout: { debug: true } or a granular LayoutDebugOptions (showMargins / showContentBounds / showCells). Byte-identical when debug is off.

Font-Data Tools (pdfnative/tools)

AcroForm Fields

Digital Signatures

Streaming Output

Crypto (Hashing, ASN.1, RSA, ECDSA, X.509, CMS)

PDF Parser & Modifier

Document Block Types

Tagged PDF & PDF/A

Encryption

Encryption is configured via the encryption option in layout options. Internal encryption functions are not part of the public API.

const pdf = buildPDFBytes(params, {
  encryption: { userPassword: 'secret', ownerPassword: 'admin', permissions: { printing: true } }
});

Color Utilities

Compression

Browser compression — In browser environments without native zlib, inject a third-party DEFLATE via setDeflateImpl:

import { setDeflateImpl, buildPDFBytes } from 'pdfnative';
import { deflateSync } from 'fflate'; // or pako

setDeflateImpl(deflateSync);

const pdf = buildPDFBytes(params, { compress: true });

Fonts

Shaping

Layout Constants

Ecosystem

pdfnative ships as a library, but three official companion packages cover the most common non-library use cases — a CLI, an MCP server, and a React renderer. All live in separate repositories and depend on pdfnative only through the public API, so the core library stays zero-dependency.

pdfnative-cli — command-line interface

pdfnative-cli v1.1.0 is the official CLI, built on pdfnative v1.3.0. It exposes six commands — render, sign, inspect, verify, batch, and schema (plus completion) — for use in shell scripts, Makefiles, GitHub Actions, and Docker images. Zero extra runtime dependencies, npm-provenance-signed, with a CycloneDX SBOM attached to every release.

New in v1.1.0: 22 Unicode scripts + COLRv1 colour emoji through the --font/--lang shortcuts, true constant-memory streaming (--stream-true), a --max-blocks cap for very large documents, and a PDF/UA (ISO 14289-1) structural validator (inspect --pdfua / --check pdfua). It also adds an agent-native contract — a global --json status/error envelope, stable E_* error codes, a --dry-run validation mode, the new schema command (Draft 2020-12), and token-economy output projection (--summary / --fields + compact JSON) that cuts agent output ~90 %. 100 % backward-compatible.

# render with full layout coverage (encryption + watermark + PDF/A-2b)
npx pdfnative-cli render --input doc.json --output report.pdf \
  --tagged pdfa2b --compress \
  --watermark-text "DRAFT" --watermark-opacity 0.15

# sign with metadata and intermediate cert chain
npx pdfnative-cli sign --input report.pdf --output signed.pdf \
  --reason "Approved" --name "Finance Team" \
  --signing-time 2026-04-28T10:00:00Z \
  --cert-chain intermediate.pem

# verify embedded signatures (byte-range + chain + trust + revocation)
npx pdfnative-cli verify --input signed.pdf --strict --trust ca-root.pem

# inspect with CI assertions, incl. PDF/UA accessibility gate (exit 1 on failure)
npx pdfnative-cli inspect --input signed.pdf \
  --check pdfa --check signed --check pdfua --json --summary

See the CLI Guide for the full v1.1.0 reference, agent contract, security model, and recipes. Try the interactive CLI playground to build commands without leaving the browser.

pdfnative-mcp — Model Context Protocol server

pdfnative-mcp v1.3.0 is a Model Context Protocol server that bridges pdfnative to any MCP-compatible AI client. Once configured, your AI assistant can generate PDFs, embed barcodes, create forms, sign and verify documents, validate PDF/UA structure, embed and extract attachments, extract text, render international text, merge, split and extract pages, and inspect existing PDFs — all without writing code.

v1.0.0: first stable MCP release with 12 tools, verify_pdf, add_attachment (Factur-X / ZUGFeRD PDF/A-3), extract_text, smart-table options, auto-placeholder signing, and _meta.apiVersion.

v1.1.0: adds validate_pdf, six additional scripts (Telugu, Sinhala, Tibetan, Khmer, Myanmar, Ethiopic), and COLRv1 colour-emoji support via the pdfnative 1.3.0 engine.

v1.2.0: adds extract_attachments, watermark options on document tools, Unicode normalize (NFC/NFD/NFKC/NFKD), token-frugal read modes (verbosity/fields), and returns base64 PDF bytes once via a resource block.

v1.3.0: adds the page-tree trio merge_pdfs / split_pdf / extract_pages (17 tools total), enriched authoring options (outline, pageLabels, nested lists, viewerPreferences, cellBorders, cellVAlign), a constant-time node:crypto signing provider, and DNS-rebinding protection on the HTTP transport — all via the pdfnative 1.4.0 engine.

npx -y pdfnative-mcp

Available tools

Claude Desktop configuration

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pdfnative": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "pdfnative-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "PDFNATIVE_MCP_OUTPUT_DIR": "/Users/you/Documents/mcp-pdfs"
      }
    }
  }
}

See the MCP Integration Guide and the pdfnative-mcp repository for configuration on Cursor, Continue, Zed, and more.

pdfnative-react — declarative JSX renderer

pdfnative-react v0.2.0 turns declarative JSX into real, on-device PDFs powered by the zero-dependency pdfnative engine — no DOM, no headless browser, no SaaS round-trips. A custom React reconciler compiles your component tree synchronously into the pdfnative block model. Requires React 19 and Node.js ≥ 20 (React is a peer dependency; pdfnative itself stays zero-dependency).

import { Document, Heading, Text, Table, renderToBytes } from 'pdfnative-react';

const bytes = renderToBytes(
  <Document title="Invoice #1024" footerText="Acme Inc">
    <Heading level={1}>Invoice #1024</Heading>
    <Text>Thank you for your business.</Text>
    <Table
      headers={['Item', 'Qty', 'Total']}
      rows={[{ cells: ['Pro plan', '1', '$49.00'], type: 'default', pointed: false }]}
      zebra
    />
  </Document>,
); // → Uint8Array, a valid PDF

Every component (Document, Page, Heading, Paragraph/Text, List/Item, Table/Row/Cell, Image, Link, Spacer, PageBreak, TableOfContents, Barcode, Svg, FormField) maps 1:1 onto a pdfnative block. Render with renderToBytes / renderToBlob / renderToStream / renderToFile, preview live with the usePdf hook and PDFViewer / PDFDownloadLink / BlobProvider client components, or let AI agents author documents with the token-frugal DocSpec (terse JSON tuples that compile to the same PDF, validated by a versioned JSON Schema).

See the React Guide for the full component reference, and try the interactive React playground to render JSX to PDF in your browser.

Architecture

src/
├── index.ts              # Public API — single entry point
├── types/
│   ├── pdf-types.ts      # Core TypeScript type definitions
│   └── pdf-document-types.ts  # Document builder type definitions (blocks, params)
├── core/
│   ├── pdf-builder.ts    # Table-centric PDF assembly + /Info metadata + tagged PDF
│   ├── pdf-document.ts   # Free-form document builder (headings, paragraphs, lists, tables, images)
│   ├── pdf-assembler.ts  # Shared PDF binary assembly primitives (xref, trailer, writer)
│   ├── encoding-context.ts # Encoding context factory (dependency inversion from fonts/)
│   ├── pdf-image.ts      # JPEG/PNG parsing + PDF Image XObject builder
│   ├── pdf-text.ts       # Text rendering (Latin + CIDFont + shaped + tagged)
│   ├── pdf-stream.ts     # Binary utilities + download
│   ├── pdf-stream-writer.ts # AsyncGenerator streaming output
│   ├── pdf-layout.ts     # Layout constants & computation
│   ├── pdf-tags.ts       # Tagged PDF: structure tree, XMP metadata, ICC profile
│   ├── pdf-annot.ts      # Link annotations: /URI, /GoTo, URL validation + control-char hardening
│   ├── pdf-color.ts      # Color parsing, validation, normalization
│   ├── pdf-compress.ts   # FlateDecode stream compression (zlib, stored-block fallback)
│   ├── pdf-watermark.ts  # Text/image watermarks with ExtGState transparency
│   ├── pdf-barcode.ts    # Barcode/QR code encoders + PDF path rendering (5 formats)
│   ├── pdf-svg.ts        # SVG path/shape rendering as native PDF operators
│   ├── pdf-form.ts       # AcroForm interactive fields with appearance streams
│   ├── pdf-signature.ts  # CMS/PKCS#7 digital signatures (RSA + ECDSA)
│   └── pdf-encrypt.ts    # AES-128/256 encryption, MD5, SHA-256, key derivation
├── crypto/
│   ├── sha.ts            # SHA-384, SHA-512, HMAC-SHA-256
│   ├── asn1.ts           # ASN.1 DER encoding/decoding
│   ├── rsa.ts            # RSA PKCS#1 v1.5 sign/verify
│   ├── ecdsa.ts          # ECDSA P-256 sign/verify
│   ├── x509.ts           # X.509 certificate parsing
│   └── cms.ts            # CMS SignedData (PKCS#7) builder
├── parser/
│   ├── pdf-inflate.ts    # DEFLATE decompression (zlib inflate)
│   ├── pdf-tokenizer.ts  # PDF lexical