The PDF Splitter: One Feature, One Weekend, One Thousand Use Cases
Splitting a PDF sounds simple, but I wanted it to be genuinely flexible — by page range, by every N pages, or extract specific pages. All in one tool.
The PDF splitter was one of those tools where user feedback completely reshaped the final product.
I launched the first version with one feature: enter a page range, get a PDF. Simple. Within a week, I had requests for three other split modes that I hadn't considered.
Split by every N pages — "I have a 200-page document that's actually 40 separate 5-page reports. Can I split it automatically?" Yes, now you can.
Extract specific pages — "I just need pages 3, 7, and 15-20 from this 100-page document." Done. Type your pages like "3, 7, 15-20" and it figures it out.
Split every page into individual files — "I have a scanned book and need each page as its own PDF." That one actually generates a ZIP file with all the individual pages numbered.
That third mode was technically interesting — generating a ZIP file on the fly without storing it on the server. The file streams directly to the user's browser as it's being created. No temp files left behind.
The PDF splitter is now four tools in one. I'm still getting feature requests. Each one teaches me something about how people actually work.