I wanted a private, client-side PDF manipulation toolkit on my own domain (pdf.meinard.dev) without running a dedicated VPS. I forked BentoPDF and deployed it to Netlify's free tier.

Because BentoPDF executes everything client-side using WebAssembly (including a compiled LibreOffice binary for Office-to-PDF conversions), standard static hosting requires specific HTTP headers to work.

1. Fork & Connect to Netlify

1. Fork alam00000/bentopdf to your GitHub account.
2. Import the repository into Netlify:
   • Build command: npm run build
   • Publish directory: dist
   • Node version: 18 or 20

2. Header Configuration (netlify.toml)

LibreOffice WASM requires SharedArrayBuffer, which modern browsers only enable when the page is cross-origin isolated. Additionally, pre-compressed .wasm.gz assets must be served with Content-Encoding: gzip.

Add this netlify.toml to your project root:

[build]
  command = "npm run build"
  publish = "dist"
 
[build.environment]
  NODE_VERSION = "20"
 
# Enable SharedArrayBuffer for LibreOffice WASM
[[headers]]
  for = "/*"
  [headers.values]
    Cross-Origin-Embedder-Policy = "require-corp"
    Cross-Origin-Opener-Policy = "same-origin"
    Cross-Origin-Resource-Policy = "cross-origin"
 
# Serve pre-compressed WASM binaries with proper headers
[[headers]]
  for = "/libreoffice-wasm/soffice.wasm.gz"
  [headers.values]
    Content-Type = "application/wasm"
    Content-Encoding = "gzip"
    Cache-Control = "public, max-age=31536000, immutable"
 
[[headers]]
  for = "/libreoffice-wasm/soffice.data.gz"
  [headers.values]
    Content-Type = "application/octet-stream"
    Content-Encoding = "gzip"
    Cache-Control = "public, max-age=31536000, immutable"
 
[[headers]]
  for = "*.wasm"
  [headers.values]
    Cache-Control = "public, max-age=31536000, immutable"
    Content-Type = "application/wasm"
 
# SPA routing
[[redirects]]
  from = "/*"
  to = "/index.html"
  status = 200

3. Troubleshooting

• Conversion stuck at 55%: Verify window.crossOriginIsolated === true in the browser console. If false, the COEP/COOP headers are missing.
• Magic word error (00 61 73 6d expected): The .wasm.gz files were served without Content-Encoding: gzip, causing raw gzip bytes to be fed into the WASM compiler.

4. Custom Domain

Under Site settings → Domain management, point a CNAME for pdf.meinard.dev to Netlify's DNS target.