Strive Math

Posted on Dec 6

How We Built a PDF Generator Inside ChatGPT to Solve a Real Classroom Problem

#aitool #chatgpt #mcp #latex

From messy worksheets to instant PDFs - a story of frustration, iteration, and a surprisingly powerful MCP server.

When you run a live education company, your users don’t complain politely - they feel problems immediately.

For us at Strive, that moment came during a regular parent-teacher feedback call.

“The classes are great… but homework is inconsistent. Sometimes it comes as screenshots, sometimes as Google Docs, sometimes as photos.”

That single comment exposed a pain we had quietly accepted for too long:

creating clean, printable, structured worksheets was a massive operational bottleneck.

Our teachers were:

Writing questions in chat
Copy-pasting into Google Docs
Formatting equations manually, or trying to get ChatGPT to do it, but being unsuccessful
Exporting to PDF
Then uploading and sending files one by one

It worked - but it was painfully inefficient.

And with hundreds of classes a week, the friction compounded fast.

So we asked a simple question:

What if ChatGPT could generate a ready-to-send PDF directly?

That question turned into the PDF Generator inside ChatGPT.

This is the story of how we built it - what broke, what worked, and what surprised us.

The Real Problem: Not AI - Operations

The technical capability already existed:

LaTeX could create beautiful worksheets.
PDF generation was trivial on a server.
ChatGPT was already generating great questions.

The true problem was workflow friction.

Teachers don’t want to:

Learn LaTeX
Manage folders
Export files manually
Or debug formatting issues at 9pm before a class

They wanted:

One prompt
One click
One downloadable PDF

So the product goal became brutally simple:

Type a prompt → Get a formatted worksheet as a PDF.

No tools. No exporting. No formatting.

Just teaching.

The First Naive Build (That Failed Spectacularly)

Our first internal prototype was… optimistic.

We tried:

Generating LaTeX via ChatGPT
Copy-pasting into a LaTeX compiler
Downloading the resulting PDF
Sending it to parents manually

It worked technically.

But operationally it was too fragile:

One missing bracket broke the file
Teachers didn’t understand why PDFs failed
Debugging LaTeX became a full-time job

We had simply moved the pain — not eliminated it.

That’s when our engineer said:

“If teachers are using ChatGPT anyway… why don’t we put the PDF engine inside ChatGPT?”

That idea changed everything.

The Breakthrough: The MCP Server + Custom ChatGPT App

Instead of building a separate website, we used:

A custom MCP server
A ChatGPT App via Developer Mode
A LaTeX-to-PDF rendering pipeline
Auto-return of the generated file

Now the flow became:

Teacher types:

“Create a 10-question grade 6 algebra worksheet with answers.”
ChatGPT sends structured LaTeX to our MCP server
Server compiles the PDF
PDF is returned instantly inside chat

No copy-pasting.

No broken exports.

No formatting chaos.

Just prompt → PDF.

What Went Wrong (So Much Went Wrong)

Like any real build, this wasn’t smooth:

1. LaTeX Failures at Scale

Early versions failed silently when:

Questions were too long
Special characters weren’t escaped

We had to build:

Auto-sanitization
Fallback templates

2. Server Cold Starts

Our first version slept when unused.

Teachers thought the tool was broken when the first request took 20 seconds.

We fixed it with:

Added a loading animation so teacher knew that it was thinking and still working

3. Over-Engineering Early

Our first iteration supported:

Multiple layouts
Multiple paper sizes
Custom branding
Answer sheets, rubrics, solutions

Teachers used… exactly one layout.

We stripped it back to:

Clean worksheet
Optional answer key
Instant download

Lesson learned: Usability beats feature count every time.

What Finally Worked

Once stabilized, three things made the product stick internally:

Teachers stopped asking for worksheets

They just generated them on demand.
Homework turnaround dropped from 20 minutes to 30 seconds
Consistency improved overnight

Every worksheet now looked clean, printable, and professional.

And the real validation moment?

A parent asked, “Did you hire a new curriculum designer?”

We didn’t. We just changed the workflow.

What the PDF Generator Does Today

Inside ChatGPT, our teachers can now:

Generate:
- Math worksheets
- Coding exercises
- Practice tests
- Resumes
- Tables, graphs and diagrams
Automatically:
- Professionally formats everything in LaTeX
- Compile into a clean PDF
- Download instantly
Without:
- Leaving ChatGPT
- Touching Google Docs
- Learning any technical syntax

A sample prompt:

“Create a Grade 7 fractions worksheet with 10 questions and an answer key.”

Output:

✅ Structured

✅ Printable

✅ Ready to send in under 5 seconds

What’s Next

We’re now expanding the generator to support:

Auto-differentiated worksheets (same topic, different difficulty)
Student-specific homework packs
Bulk generation for entire classes
And direct LMS uploads

But the original goal remains unchanged:

Let teachers focus on teaching - not document creation.

Final Thought

This tool didn’t start as a product idea.

It started as a complaint from a tired teacher and a frustrated parent.

And that’s how most good tools are born.

Not from ambition -

but from pain you feel often enough to finally fix properly.

Top comments (5)

Preetha • Dec 6

You’re absolutely right, the operational bottleneck you highlighted is very real. We struggle with the same issue in our after-school programs. It’s impressive how removing a single step like manual exports can create such a large ripple effect in efficiency. This feels like a perfect example of internal tooling naturally evolving into a scalable product.

NGL Shorts • Dec 6

As a math teacher, this hits so close to home. I spend way too much time formatting worksheets instead of planning lessons. The idea of going from “prompt → printable PDF” in seconds honestly feels life-changing.