Project Overview
I started out this project with a pretty straightforward idea that is to extract highlights from a PDF and present them in one place. As I developed it, I figured, why not take it a step further and also generate a summary based on those highlights, but over time, as I built and iterated on the web app, I ended up with a slightly different version where the app extracts highlights and also provides a clean summary of the PDF itself.
Final Features
- Drag & Drop PDF Upload: Intuitive UI for seamless file uploads (stored locally for performance)
- Two Core Functions:
- Get Highlights – Extracts annotations and highlight tags from the PDF
- Get Summary – Uses PyPDF2 and networkx to generate a concise summary
- Caching System: Improves performance using hashed file caching for recent uploads
- Feedback Form: Sends user feedback via email using Nodemailer
- Python Integration: Used Python where Node.js fell short for accurate PDF parsing and processing
Tech Stack
- Frontend: HTML, Tailwind CSS, JavaScript
- Backend: Node.js, Express, Multer
- Python: PyMuPDF, PyPDF2, pdf-parse for parsing logic
Challenges & Solutions
- PDF Parsing Limitations in JavaScript → Solved by integrating Python scripts executed via child_process, ensuring better accuracy and flexibility
- Handling Cold Starts for Python Scripts → Preloaded Python environments with a minimal process pool to reduce latency on first run
- Cross Platform Development → Wrote adaptive code for OS specific Python paths (Windows, macOS, Linux, and Render hosting)
- Performance Optimization → Implemented caching for repeated file processing and added timeout guards to prevent server hangs
Impact & Learnings
- Deployed a fully working end to end summarization tool with scalable architecture
- Designed with minimalist UX to simplify interaction while offering powerful features
- Balanced user needs, technical constraints, and API limitations through quick iteration and agile debugging
- Gained experience in full stack development, process optimization, and backend performance tuning