DEV Community: Bigyan Karki

How to Add Link Previews to Any App in One Line of Code

Bigyan Karki — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 20:46:07 +0000

Ever needed to show a preview of a PDF, document, or website in your app? Setting up Puppeteer, LibreOffice, and ffmpeg is painful. Here's a simpler way.

The problem

You have a list of file URLs — PDFs, DOCX, PPTX, videos, websites — and you want to show thumbnails. The usual approach:

Spin up a headless browser for website screenshots
Install LibreOffice for document rendering
Use ffmpeg for video thumbnails
Handle caching, rate limiting, error handling...

That's a lot of infrastructure for thumbnails.

The solution

Prepend preview.thedrive.ai/ to any URL. That's it.

<img src="https://preview.thedrive.ai/arxiv.org/pdf/1706.03762" />

This returns a JPEG thumbnail of the first page of that PDF. Works with 67+ file formats.

Examples

PDF preview:

<img src="https://preview.thedrive.ai/arxiv.org/pdf/1706.03762" />

Website screenshot:

<img src="https://preview.thedrive.ai/https://dev.to/" />

PowerPoint thumbnail:

<img src="https://preview.thedrive.ai/example.com/slides.pptx" />

Using with Next.js

import Image from 'next/image'
import Link from 'next/link'

<Link href="https://example.com/report.pdf">
  <Image
    src="https://preview.thedrive.ai/example.com/report.pdf"
    alt="preview"
    width={600}
    height={400}
  />
</Link>

Custom dimensions and quality

// 800x600 at 90% quality
preview.thedrive.ai/example.com/doc.pdf?w=800&h=600&q=90

// Skip cache for fresh render
preview.thedrive.ai/example.com/doc.pdf?nocache=true

What it supports

Documents: PDF, DOCX, PPTX, XLSX, ODT, RTF
Images: JPG, PNG, GIF, WebP, SVG, AVIF, HEIC
Video: MP4, MOV, WebM, AVI, MKV
Code: 30+ languages with syntax highlighting
Markdown with formatted rendering
Any website via headless browser screenshot

67+ formats total. Returns a JPEG thumbnail every time.

Social media previews for free

When you share a preview.thedrive.ai link on Discord, Slack, or Twitter, it automatically generates rich preview cards with OG tags. No extra configuration needed.

API details

Free tier: 30 requests/min, no API key, no signup
Pro tier: 120 requests/min with SLA ($19/mo)
Default output: 600x400 JPEG, quality 95
Caching: 24-hour server cache + 7-day browser cache

Use cases

File managers showing document thumbnails
CMS/blog editors with link preview cards
Search results with visual thumbnails
Chat apps embedding file previews
Emails with inline document previews (<img> tags work in email)

Try it out: preview.thedrive.ai

❤️ Date Me Docs

Bigyan Karki — Sun, 10 Dec 2023 23:24:36 +0000

What is Date Me Doc?

"Date-me docs” are both an emerging dating trend and a relic of a past era, more akin to newspaper personal ads than any bio posted on an algorithm-driven, swipe-based app. - NYT

The "Date Me Doc" is a new feature inspired by a trend highlighted in The New York Times and Wired, where people use detailed, Google Docs-like documents to express their dating preferences. Unlike brief profiles on dating apps, these documents allow individuals to thoroughly describe themselves, their interests, and what they seek in a partner. Accessible at https://thedrive.ai/date, this experimental feature aligns with the growing shift away from traditional dating apps, providing a more personal and comprehensive way for users to find romantic connections. This feature, however, does not mean we are shifting our focus to being a dating app or company.

How Do I Make My Date Me Doc?

The core of "Date Me Doc" is its format-free approach: it's simply a document about yourself and what you're looking for. For inspiration, Steve has a directory of such docs on Notion. On The Drive AI, you can set any document as your public profile, whether it's a PDF, a YouTube video, a website, or something created in our editor.

AI assistant

On your profile page, you have the option to turn on the assistant feature. This lets you choose how the assistant talks, kind of like setting its personality to match your style. You can also add extra details to make it more personal. Think of it as creating your own AI buddy that reflects who you are. The assistant only answers based on the contents of the profile page, and additional information provided to it.

Happy date-me-docing!!

Why am I working on The Drive AI

Bigyan Karki — Sun, 13 Aug 2023 18:23:21 +0000

Before answering the question, let's start with the problem.

Our files are scattered everywhere.
I send files via Gmail to friends, upload them to Slack and Discord for work, and store personal documents in Google Drive and on my local machine. I even have tons of notes in OneNote. Finding a specific file, like my 2 a.m. thoughts, becomes a challenge. Was it in OneNote or Google Docs? And if it's in Google Docs, which of the hundreds of folders? Maybe I sent it to a friend via email or even Discord?
This problem is magnified in teams where files are constantly sent across members, making search and management a daunting task. In a large company, it's common to send the same file multiple times to the same employee simply because they couldn't find it.
Inefficient use of stored information.
In one way or another, we all have a vast internal knowledge base. Most internet users store files in storage systems like Google Drive, Obsidian, or Notion. But we often don't make good use of these stored knowledge bases. Consider this scenario: I'm struggling to solve a complex Calculus question. I have my Calculus book, which contains information on how to solve such problems. Even if it doesn't have the answer to the specific question I'm working on, it has the steps, rules, and information needed to solve it. Why can't I simply ask my book for the steps that would lead me to the solution? Additionally, if I want to write an article about the Amazon forest and have related materials in my Google Drive, why can't I use them to help write the article?

These are the two main problems we are trying to solve at The Drive AI. First, we aim to be a Dropbox for your knowledge base. Users can simply upload or sync documents to create a structured repository of information. Currently, you must manually manage these documents into files and folders, but our goal is to automatically organize them by content. For example, all content related to music theory would be found in one specific folder.

We treat each folder as a knowledge base, a single source of truth to draw information from. So, if you forgot what notes are in Misolydian mode, you can simply ask the music theory knowledge base. Sure you can search the internet for notes in Misolydian mode, but the core idea holds for internal teams and personal documents. Imagine an emergency at a company, and you need to find information on what protocols to follow in the face of an emergency.

With access to this knowledge base, we can tackle the second problem. We can use those files while reading to understand concepts better, search over them to quickly find information, and write new content with sources drawn from them.

This is what we are working on at https://thedrive.ai

Full article here: https://thedrive.ai/publish/ebfb16a7d2cfde880df194bfd72178c2:9f7272e3919e859c34e796679a9206b896594e0834888db4a18ee7b50cda83407c011872e6dff7dae582bdc83996e386

What the heck am I building?

Bigyan Karki — Sun, 13 Aug 2023 07:32:48 +0000

Before answering the question, let's start with the problem.

Our files are scattered everywhere.
I send files via Gmail to friends, upload them to Slack and Discord for work, and store personal documents in Google Drive and on my local machine. I even have tons of notes in OneNote. Finding a specific file, like my 2 a.m. thoughts, becomes a challenge. Was it in OneNote or Google Docs? And if it's in Google Docs, which of the hundreds of folders? Maybe I sent it to a friend via email or even Discord?
This problem is magnified in teams where files are constantly sent across members, making search and management a daunting task. In a large company, it's common to send the same file multiple times to the same employee simply because they couldn't find it.
Inefficient use of stored information.
In one way or another, we all have a vast internal knowledge base. Most internet users store files in storage systems like Google Drive, Obsidian, or Notion. But we often don't make good use of these stored knowledge bases. Consider this scenario: I'm struggling to solve a complex Calculus question. I have my Calculus book, which contains information on how to solve such problems. Even if it doesn't have the answer to the specific question I'm working on, it has the steps, rules, and information needed to solve it. Why can't I simply ask my book for the steps that would lead me to the solution? Additionally, if I want to write an article about the Amazon forest and have related materials in my Google Drive, why can't I use them to help write the article?

This is what we are working on at https://thedrive.ai

Full article here: https://thedrive.ai/publish/ebfb16a7d2cfde880df194bfd72178c2:9f7272e3919e859c34e796679a9206b896594e0834888db4a18ee7b50cda83407c011872e6dff7dae582bdc83996e386

I am working on a context-aware storage/knowledge base platform called The Drive AI.

Bigyan Karki — Sat, 08 Jul 2023 23:09:07 +0000

I recently launched an MVP of a context-aware storage/knowledge base platform called The Drive AI. The crux of the app is to let you build your knowledge base by either uploading, importing or syncing your files across existing storage systems.

After you build your knowledge base, you can easily search over them, ask ChatGPT-like questions, and get answers from your knowledge base. Additionally, you can write new content with sources drawn from your knowledge base.

We also want to integrate a team chat feature, so that your team would have storage and communication in a single place. I would love to hear your feedback. :)