Top all-time · #22853
DocSpring Blog
Company blog · docspring.com/blog · on HN as nathan_f77programmingaiweb
DocSpring Blog is the company blog at docspring.com, writing about programming, ai and web. Since 2019, 3 different Hacker News readers have linked it 17 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-28, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (2) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Commenters point to DocSpring as a PDF service for programmatically filling and generating PDFs, and one praises its documentation. The comments don't discuss the blog's posts themselves.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 2 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Turn PDF forms, Word documents, page designs and HTML templates into an API. Send JSON from your app and get back a filled PDF or Word file.
Most-linked posts?
- /2 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2019-11-08
What Hacker News says?
I would like to start using Pandoc in my commercial software [1] to help convert documents into different formats, but the GPL license makes that difficult (or at least confusing.) I think it's generally fine to call a GPL program from a SaaS application. I believe it's fine as long as it is providing an optional or tangential feature, and your application can continue to perform the core functions when that GPL too…
Comment linking /
on “Pandoc – A universal document converter”Submitted Does code quality still matter when AI writes the code? as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThere are quite a few services that should be able to solve this problem (turning a PDF into a web form and collecting signatures.) Here's a few of the services I'm aware of: * https://www.hellosign.com/products/helloworks * https://www.useanvil.com * https://www.pandadoc.com * https://www.pdffiller.com * https://www.platoforms.com * JotForm ( https://www.jotform.com/help/433-How-to-Add-an-E-Signature-t... ) * https…
Comment linking /docs/data_requests.html
on “What's so hard about PDF text extraction?”Submitted Automatically update Docker gem versions from Gemfile.lock as a story · 2 points
HN discussionFor programmatic filling of PDFs, have a look at DocSpring: https://docspring.com
Comment linking /
on “Launch HN: Onedoc (YC W24) – A better way to create PDFs”Submitted Bundler's Lasting Impact on Software Development as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI would love to hear your thoughts about adding a free tier for my PDF filling service [1]. What's your first impression about the current pricing? I experimented with a "pay as you go" plan that starts at $0 and includes some free PDFs, but so far I've earned close $0 from all of these customers. But this might just be because the people who asked about alternative pricing are much more price-sensitive and early-st…
Comment linking /
on “Building a Developer Tools Business”Submitted End-to-End API Client Testing: From RSwag to 360 Verified Code Examples as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI'm still working on DocSpring [1], originally launched on Hacker News in October 2017 under the name "FormAPI." It's a PDF generation API with a template editor UI for setting up fields on PDF forms. It makes it easy to turn complex tax and immigration forms into simple type-safe APIs with strong validations. I've been having a lot of fun with AI agents lately. Have tried a lot of them - Cline, Roo Code, Windsurf,…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What are you working on? (February 2025)”Submitted How We Unified API Tests, SDKs, and Docs into One Workflow as a story · 1 points
HN discussionReally handy service, even if there are probably a lot out there already. The following might be worth to check out: - https://docspring.com/ - https://bulk-pdf.com/ However a good documentation you have there!
Comment linking /
on “Show HN: PDF API – Generate, convert, and modify PDF documents”Submitted One Week with Claude 3.5 Sonnet: Surprising Realities of AI Pair Programming as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI strongly agree! I really like the idea of a "finished" product that doesn't keep adding new features and growing the team just because they took too much funding and need to find more ways to grow. This is kind of product I'm trying to build with my startup [1]. (I did take some funding from Earnest Capital, but this was just to help with my personal living expenses and pay for a few larger projects.) [1] https://…
Comment linking /
on “Carbonite To Be Acquired by OpenText for $1.4B”Submitted AI Pair Programming with Cline as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThis was really interesting to read, since I'm about to rebrand my own startup. The stakes are a lot lower in my case, but hopefully it doesn't turn out like this. I'm going to rename FormAPI [1] to DocSpring.com [2]. I'm also launching a new website, and you can see a preview on my staging servers [3]. The main reason for the rebrand is that FormAPI wasn't a very good name. The service is an API for filling out PDF…
Comment linking /
on “Looka lays off staff as failed rebrand from Logojoy cut revenue in half”Great post. I've spend a lot of time reading through the PDF specification over the last ~5 years while building DocSpring [1], and I still feel like I've barely scratched the surface. qpdf is a great tool. One of my other favorites is RUPS [2], which really lets you dig into the structure of a PDF. [1] https://docspring.com [2] https://github.com/itext/i7j-rups
Comment linking /
on “So you want to modify the text of a PDF by hand”