Mdpdf a 2k line C CLI to convert Markdown to tiny PDFs
Details
- External ID
- 47705802
- Source
- HN
- Company
- —
- Product
- Mdpdf a 2k line C CLI to convert Markdown to tiny PDFs
- Website domain
- github.com
- Launched
- April 9, 2026
- Cohort
- —
- Upvotes
- 15
- Upvotes percentile
- 0.7062982005141388
- Tags
- —
- Fetched at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.
- Updated at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.
Description
I have always searched for a simple tool which can convert a MD document to a well styled small PDF, just like a GitHub Readme.This was inspired by TinyPDF https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46316968I also used this project to get familiar with agentic coding, which I had dreaded before.mdpdf supports:- using the included PDF fonts to generate tiny valid PDFs- outputs as A4 or Letter depending on your locale- plenty of common MD syntax: code blocks, inline code, lists, tables, and jpg and png imagesThat's it. It covers probably most of the use cases and can help to simply convert a Markdown write-up to a PDF to share.GitHub: https://github.com/schicho/mdpdfA simple make call should build it for you.
Enrichment
- Theme
- document and PDF utility tools
- Vertical
- Horizontal
- Function
- Dev tools
- Audience
- Developer
- AI stance
- Not AI
- Project type
- Hobby / open-source project
- Normalized one-liner
- markdown to pdf converter
- Manually corrected
- False
Could you build this?
Yes The author specifically demonstrated that this 2,000-line C Markdown-to-PDF utility was written using an AI coding agent.
Discussion
4 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: voiden.md (markdown-based API client)
Feature requests: Markdown to PDF screenshot examples in README, Output option with blank space (40-60%) on right side for handwritten notes (Tufte layout), Screenshot of rendered PDF output in README
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one — 349 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #109 of 350 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 137 days after the earliest competitor.
- mdprint · ph · 2026-09-22 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.67
- PDF to MD · ph · 2026-09-10 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.63
- Pdf-to-Markdown CLI · hn · 2026-04-02 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.55
- MDFK · ph · 2026-09-09 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.54
- Markdown Viewer and Editor · hn · 2026-08-31 · 34 upvotes · similarity 0.53
- MDXport · hn · 2025-12-17 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.53
- MDDeck · ph · 2026-09-26 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.51
- ConvertPDF · ph · 2026-09-28 · 4 upvotes · similarity 0.50
Other launches for this product
- No other launches for this product.
Same idea, different domain
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