i've been lurking in dev spaces for a while, but only recently started actually shipping.
earlier this week, i quietly launched my first microtool: fileslap.com — a simple HTML to PDF API with no signup, no SDKs, and no bloat.
this post isn’t a pitch — just wanted to reflect on:
- why i built it
- what i learned
- what i’d do differently next time
the problem
i was building an internal dashboard and needed to export some styled reports to PDF.
i tried:
- wkhtmltopdf (painful layout quirks)
- Puppeteer (too heavy for the job)
- 3+ commercial APIs (signup walls, rate limits, weird formatting)
all i wanted was to curl a URL and get a clean PDF.
what i built
so i wrote my own: a simple REST API that converts HTML → PDF using headless Chrome.
it’s:
- zero-auth
- fast enough for realtime jobs
- dev-friendly by default (curlable + webhook-ready)
free tier's live at fileslap.com
what i learned
- launching is uncomfortable — especially when you’re just getting started
- finishing touches take 3x longer than you think
- building something small forces sharp thinking
- you can still over-engineer something that’s only ~100 lines of logic
- feedback > features
what’s next?
- i’m still figuring that out.
- i’ll probably keep shipping small tools like this — tools i wish existed, tools i’ll use myself, tools that stay out of your way.
- if you’ve worked on something similar or just want to jam on dev tooling, hit me up. i’m mostly quiet, occasionally useful.
— ExitCodeZer0
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