Moriaki Webapps started as a tool I built for myself. I never planned to host it for anyone else — that part happened by accident.
By training I’m a data scientist. I have a BSc and an MSc, and I work as a scientist by profession. Building small web applications and software is something I do on the side, mostly because I enjoy solving my own problems with code. Most of these little projects never leave my laptop. Moriaki PDF was supposed to be one of them.
The problem I was actually trying to solve
Like a lot of people, I regularly needed to do boring things to PDF files — merge a few documents, compress something that was too big to email, split out a single page, convert a scan to images. The usual way to do this is to search “compress PDF online,” upload your file to whatever site comes up first, and hope for the best.
That always bothered me. The documents I was working with weren’t always trivial — contracts, statements, identity documents, research material. Uploading those to an anonymous server, with no real way to know what happens to them afterwards, felt like a bad trade for a convenience that should be simple. As someone who works with data for a living, “just trust us, we delete it later” is not a sentence I find reassuring.
So I built a version that didn’t need to upload anything. Everything runs inside your browser, on your own machine. The file never leaves your device. For me that wasn’t a marketing angle — it was the entire reason the thing existed.
How it stopped being just mine
I used it quietly for months. Then a friend watched me drag a file into it, get the result instantly, and asked where the “upload” step was. When I explained there wasn’t one — that it all happened locally — they wanted to use it too. Then a colleague. Then a few more people.
At some point it became clear that the easiest thing to do was just host it properly so people could use it without me sending them a zip file. That’s how Moriaki Webapps became a public site rather than a folder on my computer.
The principles I’m keeping
Now that other people rely on it, I want to be clear about what this project is and isn’t:
- Your files stay on your device. Processing happens in your browser. Nothing is uploaded. You can disconnect from the internet after the page loads and the tools still work.
- It’s free, with no accounts. There’s no sign-up wall, no daily limit, and no watermark stamped on your output.
- It stays simple. I’d rather do a handful of common tasks well than bury you in options.
Where this is going
The PDF toolkit is the first thing I’ve hosted here, but it isn’t meant to be the last. I build small, focused tools as a hobby, and Moriaki Webapps is where I plan to put the ones that turn out to be genuinely useful — always with the same browser-first, privacy-first approach.
If you’ve found your way here, thanks for using something I originally made just for myself. If you have ideas for tools you’d want, I’m always happy to hear them.