I Built a PDF Generation API — Here's the Tech Stack and What I Learned
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I recently shipped RenderPDFs — a simple API that converts HTML or URLs to PDFs. Here's the full breakdown: stack, architecture decisions, and the painful lessons along the way. The Stack Fastify — blazing fast Node.js framework, perfect for API services Puppeteer — headless Chrome for pixel-perfect PDF rendering PostgreSQL — API keys, users, usage tracking Cloudflare R2 — PDF file storage with presigned URLs (S3-compatible, cheaper than AWS) Next.js 15 — frontend dashboard and