I got tired of using 10 different PDF websites, so I built my own.
A few months ago I noticed I had a ridiculous bookmark folder.
One site to merge PDFs.
Another one to compress them.
Another one to convert images.
Another one because the previous one suddenly wanted me to create an account.
Another one because I'd hit some random upload limit.
So I started building my own tool mostly for myself.
I thought the difficult part would be the frontend.
It wasn't.
The real pain was discovering how weird PDFs actually are. Files that open fine in one library fail in another. Compression sometimes saves 80% and sometimes barely moves the needle. Users upload things you never imagined they would upload.
The project ended up taking way longer than expected, but I learned a lot.
For anyone who's worked on file-processing software: what was the bug or edge case that made you question your life choices?