A workspace that survives a closed tab
How RatioAI keeps your current file and its version history on your own device, so reopening the tab brings everything back.
By the RatioAI team
Here's a small thing that annoyed us about most online PDF tools. You upload a file, compress it, then realise you also want to add page numbers. So you download the result, go to a different tool, upload it again, and start over. Close the tab by accident and it's all gone.
We wanted the opposite. Drop a file once, use as many tools on it as you like, and have it still be there when you come back tomorrow. Without an account, and without storing it on our servers.
Your browser has a database built in
Every modern browser ships with IndexedDB, a proper local database that can hold large binary files. It's scoped to the site, it lives on your device, and it's separate from cookies. We use it through Dexie, a friendly wrapper that makes IndexedDB much nicer to work with.
When you open a file in the workspace, it's saved into that local database. When you apply a tool, the result is saved too. Reload the page and the app simply reads it back.
Snapshots instead of overwrite
Every time you apply a change, we keep a snapshot of the previous version. That gives you a simple history: compress, watermark, rotate, and if the watermark turned out wrong, just step back one version.
Snapshots stay on your device too. We cap how many are kept so the storage doesn't grow forever, and you can clear the workspace at any time.
- Your current file is restored when you reopen the tab.
- Recent versions are kept, so you can undo whole tool runs.
- Clearing your browser data, or the workspace, removes everything.
Why not just use the cloud?
Syncing across devices is genuinely useful, and team workspaces are on our roadmap for the upcoming Business plan. But for the free workspace, we think local is the right default. It's faster, it works offline once loaded, and it keeps sensitive documents where they belong.
Local-first doesn't mean local-only forever. It means your device is the source of truth, and anything that leaves it does so because you chose that.