From time to time I get asked to convert an image, merge a couple of PDFs, generate a QR code, etc. And a lot of the sites that do this are, frankly, a little sketchy, ad-choked converter sites that feel one wrong click away from a malware download. I'd rather point people, myself included, at something I actually trust.
So I built corvidae.tools, a small, growing collection of browser-based tools. The pitch is simple: nothing you drop in ever gets uploaded anywhere. It stays in your browser tab, does its thing, and disappears when you close it.
The idea
Every tool on the site runs entirely client-side. No backend, no file upload, no server ever sees what you're working with. Convert an image, merge some PDFs, whatever, it all happens in memory in your own browser using the same JavaScript APIs any modern browser already has (canvas, pdf-lib, that kind of thing).
That's not just a privacy pitch, though it is that too. It also means the site is cheap to run and simple to maintain, static hosting, no database, nothing to secure beyond the usual web hygiene.
Why every tool is named after a bird
While thinking of and researching names, with the help of Claude I found out that Corvidae is the taxonomic family that covers crows, ravens, magpies, jays, jackdaws, nutcrackers, choughs, and rooks. A few reasons that theme actually fit, beyond just sounding good on a .tools domain:
- Corvids are genuinely tool-users. New Caledonian crows make and use tools in the wild, one of the most well-documented examples of non-primate tool use there is. For a site that's literally a collection of tools, that's more than a cute coincidence.
- They're known for problem-solving and intelligence generally, which is the vibe I wanted for a set of small, useful utilities.
- It's a whole family, not just one bird. That means I've got a long runway of species names before I'd ever need to get cute about it, each new tool gets its own name, rather than bolting generic labels onto one mascot.
- Corvids collect things. Magpies and their reputation for hoarding shiny objects is a nice, if unscientific, echo of a site that collects small useful tools in one place.
(corvid.tools was already taken, which is how I ended up on corvidae.tools instead, the family name rather than the common one. I think it reads a little sharper anyway.)
What's live right now
Two tools so far:
- Jackdaw (Coloeus monedula) — converts images between JPEG, PNG, and WebP, both directions, entirely in your browser.
- Nutcracker (Nucifraga columbiana) — merge multiple PDFs, reorder pages, drop pages you don't need, download the result.
More are being planned, I'm not quite sure what yet but, each one will get its own species and its own page once it's actually built.
What's Under the hood
It's an Astro site, static output, deployed on Cloudflare. Getting it running on Cloudflare's newer Workers-based deployment flow turned out to be its own small adventure, enough gotchas that it's worth its own post, so if you're deploying Astro to Cloudflare right now, keep an eye out for that one.
The code is on GitHub if you want to see how any of it works, or steal the approach for your own tools.
Have a look at the corvidae.tools site. If there's a small, tedious, browser-doable task you find yourself reaching for a sketchy website to do, let me know, it might make a good addition to the flock.