Show HN: PDF reflow in the browser with local AI model

#1

Post by ldenoue » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 1:15 PM UTC

Show HN: PDF reflow in the browser with local AI model
appblit.com

Re: Show HN: PDF reflow in the browser with local AI model

#2

Post by ldenoue » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 2:38 PM UTC

this app runs entirely in your browser. thanks to Codex, it now uses a YOLO detector using ONNX to detect regions in each rendered PDF page image (text, pictures, formulas, tables). based on this analysis, PDF Reflow then cuts out TEXT regions into tiny little word images and adds back the original text from the PDF (when available) so you can still select and find text in the reflowed HTML render.

Hope you find this useful. The original version used heuristics, but frankly it was breaking on many more PDF that I'd want to admint.

This new AI-based version that uses a YOLO detector trained specifically on Doc Layout dataset seems to do a very very good job.

Re: Show HN: PDF reflow in the browser with local AI model

#3

Post by top256 » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 4:08 PM UTC

Did you find tune a model?

Re: Show HN: PDF reflow in the browser with local AI model

#4

Post by ldenoue » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 5:38 PM UTC

top256 wrote: post #3

Did you find tune a model?

Not yet. for now this one from Alessandro works well: https://huggingface.co/Armaggheddon/yolo26-document-layout

Converted to ONNX of course, and also CoreML for the iOS app. I haven't yet tried on Android. Does it work for you if you have an Android phone?

Re: Show HN: PDF reflow in the browser with local AI model

#5

Post by johnadmo » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 10:16 PM UTC

ldenoue wrote: post #4

top256 wrote: post #3

Did you find tune a model?

Not yet. for now this one from Alessandro works well: https://huggingface.co/Armaggheddon/yolo26-document-layout Converted to ONNX of course, and also CoreML for the iOS app. I haven't yet tried on Android. Does it work for you if you have an Android phone?

Works fine for me on android.

I notice some inconsistent behavior with the placement of footnotes sometimes occurring inline with the text. That's kind of a tough edge case.

Re: Show HN: PDF reflow in the browser with local AI model

#6

Post by ldenoue » Thu, Jul 16, 2026, 6:59 PM UTC

johnadmo wrote: post #5

ldenoue wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not yet. for now this one from Alessandro works well: https://huggingface.co/Armaggheddon/yolo26-document-layout Converted to ONNX of course, and also CoreML for the iOS app. I haven't yet tried on Android. Does it work for you if you have an Android phone?

Works fine for me on android. I notice some inconsistent behavior with the placement of footnotes sometimes occurring inline with the text. That's kind of a tough edge case.

do you have sample PDFs?