LintPDF LintPDF

Viewer-Only Submissions

Submit a PDF with no preflight and still open it in the interactive viewer.

Viewer-Only Submissions

Viewer-only (minimal) mode submits a PDF without running any analyzer pipeline and without requiring an external preflight report. The job completes in under two seconds — we extract the pages, their geometry, and the document metadata, and the viewer opens immediately with navigation, zoom, page thumbnails, and download. Preflight tools in the viewer are rendered as Load affordances you can invoke individually.

When to use minimal mode

  • You’re building a review or approval workflow where the stakeholder — not the operator — decides which inspections to run.
  • You’re embedding the LintPDF viewer in another product and want a fast open on files that may never need a full preflight pass.
  • You want branded / anonymised / tokenized sharing of a PDF without burning a full engine run.
  • You’re triaging a large queue and want to preview files before committing compute to a full preflight.

Submission

curl -X POST https://api.lintpdf.com/api/v1/jobs \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer lpdf_live_..." \
  -F file=@brochure.pdf \
  -F preflight_source=minimal \
  -F profile_id=lintpdf-default

You still supply profile_id — even though no analyzers run, the profile’s viewer configuration (default zoom, DPI, TAC limit, toolbar layout) still applies. No external_report is required or accepted.

Response:

{
  "job_id": "d4e5f6a7-...",
  "status": "pending",
  "message": "Job submitted successfully"
}

Jobs typically complete within 1–2 seconds. Poll GET /api/v1/jobs/{job_id} until status=complete.

What the viewer shows

On a minimal-mode job the viewer config comes back with:

{
  "preflight_source": "minimal",
  "capabilities": {
    "findings": false,
    "separations": false,
    "tac": false,
    "fonts": false,
    "images": false,
    "layers": true,
    "thumbnails": true,
    "metadata": true
  },
  "enable_findings_panel": false,
  "enable_separations": false,
  "enable_tac_heatmap": false,
  "enable_page_thumbnails": true,
  "enable_zoom": true,
  "enable_download": true,
  "...": "..."
}

Features that render immediately on every minimal-mode job:

  • Page navigation, zoom (50–400%), page thumbnails.
  • Media/crop/trim/bleed box overlay.
  • Page rotation awareness.
  • PDF download.
  • Branded/anonymised viewer chrome and share-link generation.

On-demand capability fill-in

The viewer’s toolbar shows every tool your profile allows, with a Load button on tools whose capability is currently false. One click enqueues a targeted analyzer run and the tool activates when it completes — typically 3–10 seconds depending on file size and capability:

CapabilityBacking analyzerViewer tool unlocked
findingsFull engine pipelineFindings panel (all 500+ checks)
separationsSpot-color analyzerInk channel viewer
tacInk-coverage analyzerTAC heatmap overlay
fontsFont analyzerFont inspector
imagesImage analyzerImage inventory

layers (PDF optional-content groups) is populated at extraction time when present in the PDF itself — it’s not an on-demand fill-in.

See Viewer Capabilities & On-Demand Fill-In for the full API and polling pattern.

Cost and metering

A minimal-mode submission counts as one file processed against your plan. Each capability fill-in is counted separately, at roughly the same rate as one analyzer pass — typically cheaper than a full engine run. See Pricing for tier limits and overage.

The Viewer tier

For teams who always submit in minimal or external mode, the dedicated Viewer tier ($15 / month, 150 files / month) packages this workflow at a lower price point. The trade-off is a tighter feature envelope:

  • preflight_source=engine is not allowed — engine-mode submissions return a 403 plan_upgrade_required envelope. Submit in minimal or external only.
  • On-demand capability fill-in is not available — the POST /api/v1/viewer/jobs/{id}/capabilities/{capability} endpoint 403s. The viewer shows read-only copies of whatever came in with your submission (minimal = pages + metadata; external = pages + imported findings).
  • Viewer annotations are off — the annotation toolbar is hidden and the viewer ships read-only. Share-link tokens carry allow_annotations=false regardless of what was requested at mint time.
  • Report downloads are disabled — allowed_report_formats is empty, so PDF / JSON / XML exports return 403. The only output of the tier is the interactive viewer share link.

Upgrade to Starter to unlock engine submissions, on-demand fill-in, annotations, and downloadable reports. The viewer config response (GET /api/v1/viewer/jobs/{id}/config) surfaces these gates as capability_fillin_enabled, annotations_enabled, and allowed_report_formats so frontends can render appropriate upgrade prompts instead of raw 403s.

Minimal-mode jobs work with share links and branding resolution exactly like engine- or external-mode jobs. You can:

  • Generate a tokenized viewer/PDF share link via POST /api/v1/jobs/{job_id}/reports.
  • Override branding per-request with brand=anonymous, brand=lintpdf, or brand=<profile_uuid>.
  • Rely on the tenant default (anonymous-by-default for brokers; branded for direct customers).

Anonymous minimal-mode jobs still sanitize PDF metadata on the downloaded PDF and use neutral filenames. See Branded, LintPDF-Default, and Anonymous Outputs.