> like that, but (and I might be ignorant) can't you just change it's all in browser to something else and the users would be oblivious?
Excellent question! The answer is simple: we're known on the market, and trusted by our customer for this secure handling of PDFs. Should we decide to change that (unbeknownst to them), we would effectively kill our reputation and the company by extension.
> Is it possible to download as an app and disable internet (not sure if it's a feature of any browsers).
Back in the days, SimplePDF used to work offline. However maintaining that in conjunction with our paid customers features (where the online connectivity is mandatory) was too big of a maintenance burden. We decided a year ago to drop this support (silently), and no one has complained since then, confirming our hunch that it is not a high-demand feature.
Thanks! You caught a real bug: the form labels fed to the LLM were mangled. Now fixed: values land in the correct field.
On "what are we trying to solve":
Forms (PDFs, scanned paper) are still everywhere and aren't going away. SimplePDF Copilot exists to make the transition less painful. A few concrete use cases:
- Pre-filling repetitive forms from existing data sources (CRM, EHR, etc. via MCP/RAG). In most industries, employees fill forms by copy-pasting or retyping. With AI + tool calling, most of the form arrives pre-filled and the employee just corrects or adds the missing bits.
- Filling foreign-language forms. If you've moved to a new country, or know someone who has, you've had to fill out forms in a language you don't master.
- Understanding a contract before signing it. "Can I actually trust all the clauses here?" Reading proficiency changed the world by giving people a way to understand what they were signing. This extends it to legalese and odd clauses.
On Claude Cowork:
Different shape, and a different privacy model. Cowork drives a sandboxed virtual desktop: you can't see exactly what it's doing while it fills, and correcting a wrong value means another back-and-forth with the LLM.
Copilot works inside your editor: every change is visible as it happens, you can amend any field with one click, and the document never leaves your browser + it's LLM agnostic: bring your own (local or hosted).
Absolutely not insulting! In fact an excellent question!
Preview was an inspiration when I started SimplePDF, my goal was to make the "Preview" of the web, so that people without a Mac would benefit from a software matching Preview in ease of use and overall polish.
Adobe Acrobat: SimplePDF has "Simple" in the name as the philosophy is to keep it simple (both in ease of use, and features): I don't intend to support everything that Adobe Acrobat does. There's a lot of features that I could build that I intentionally do not, as they would bloat the UI and hard the overall usability. Most people have very simple needs and don't need advanced features (like scripting, etc).
- The same editor, embeddable into one’s app for companies, with the same privacy guarantees (everything happens in the browser) + the resulting PDF is stored in their own storage (« bring your own storage »).
The majority of our paid customers are in healthcare where privacy is non-negotiable. Co-pilot extends that to the AI world (« bring your own AI »)
I tried to make it clear with the popup message that appears when you start chatting: "Public demo. Use sample data only. Messages are processed by the selected AI provider."
But you're right that it's not as evident as I wanted to, I'm making a small copy update to make it clearer: "Public demo. Your chat messages leave your device and are sent to the selected AI provider. Use sample data only."
(Since there's support for local models, the popup is only displayed when NOT using your own model)
Just to be clear, this is a technical demo showing what's possible with client-side tool calling + local models: LLM-assisted form filling where no document data has to leave the user's machine.
Use cases range from:
- Filling foreign-language forms
- Navigating a contract before signing: "can I trust ALL the clauses here?"
- Pre-filling repetitive forms from existing data sources (CRM, EHR, etc. via MCP/RAG)
Copilot is designed to be embedded; our customers ship it white-labeled inside their own products.
Just to be clear, this is a technical demo showing what's possible with client-side tool calling + local models: LLM-assisted form filling where no document data has to leave the user's machine.
Use cases range from:
- Filling foreign-language forms
- Navigating a contract before signing: "can I trust ALL the clauses here?"
- Pre-filling repetitive forms from existing data sources (CRM, EHR, etc. via MCP/RAG)
Copilot is designed to be embedded; our customers ship it white-labeled inside their own products.
Excellent question! The answer is simple: we're known on the market, and trusted by our customer for this secure handling of PDFs. Should we decide to change that (unbeknownst to them), we would effectively kill our reputation and the company by extension.
> Is it possible to download as an app and disable internet (not sure if it's a feature of any browsers).
Back in the days, SimplePDF used to work offline. However maintaining that in conjunction with our paid customers features (where the online connectivity is mandatory) was too big of a maintenance burden. We decided a year ago to drop this support (silently), and no one has complained since then, confirming our hunch that it is not a high-demand feature.