The PDFHaul Journal
Field-tested guides on compressing, merging, signing, and building forms, written by the people building the tools.
Guides
comparisons·Nov 11, 2026·13 min read
This is a test of nine tools that pull PDF data into a spreadsheet. See how each scored on 3,233 cells across 20 PDFs, plus the files to test your own tool.
Read more: PDF Data Extract: 20 PDFs, 9 Tools Testedguides·Nov 2, 2026·16 min read
This is a list of the top Excel shortcuts for cleaning data. Learn how to fix a messy table faster with 22 keyboard shortcuts and a printable cheat sheet.
Read more: 22 Top Excel Shortcuts for Cleaner Dataautomation·Oct 22, 2026·21 min read
This is a step-by-step guide to PDF MCP servers. Learn how to compress, merge, convert and OCR PDFs from Claude or Cursor, using PDFHaul as the example.
Read more: PDF MCP Server: The Complete Guide [2026]automation·Oct 21, 2026·7 min read
You can already ask AI to make a PDF. Document MCP servers are for the other job: working on files you already have, with steps you can review. Here is what happened when I ran one on a real merge, dedupe and table extraction.
Read more: If AI Can Create Documents, Why Do We Need Document MCPs?engineering·Oct 1, 2026·5 min read
We built a 19-page test file to measure how well PDF tools actually detect duplicate pages, then published our results, including what we don't catch yet.
Read more: We built a test to find out how good duplicate-page detection actually is, including oursengineering·Sep 27, 2026·18 min read
MCP’s critics have a point: a bad server can make an AI workflow harder than a good CLI. But Azure, Notion, Figma, GitHub, PDFHaul, and others show why the protocol still matters. The question is whether an assistant can reach the right tools and help finish the work.
Read more: 11 MCP Servers That Prove MCP Isn't Dead
