Assemble three exhibits, compress the bundle, encrypt it before sending: the same sequence, repeated file after file. On a cloud service, “automation” means an account, an API or a paid tier. Document Flare goes the other way: the workflow lives inside the URL itself. Append #recipe=compress-pdf,protect-pdf to a tool’s address and the page already knows what to offer next — no server orchestrating anything, because all the processing happens in the browser.
The idea: the recipe travels in the URL fragment
A recipe is a list of tool identifiers placed after the # of the address:
https://documentflare.com/en/tools/merge-pdf/#recipe=compress-pdf,protect-pdfThis link opens the merge tool, then offers to continue with compression, then password protection. The choice of the fragment matters: everything after # is never sent in an HTTP request. The server that delivers the page never even sees the recipe — and it never sees your document either, since every tool processes the file in memory, on your device.
The link therefore contains only kebab-case tool names — no data, no document content. That is what makes a recipe safe to share: pasting it into an email or an internal procedure discloses nothing but a sequence of steps.
What happens when you open the link
A “Tool chain” banner shows the progress (“Step 1/3”) and the remaining steps. From there:
- Drop your file and run the tool as usual.
- Once the PDF result is produced, a “Continue to …” button appears in the banner.
- The output file is handed to the next tool directly — in memory, with no re-upload and no mandatory intermediate download.
- The URL fragment updates at each step (
#recipe=…&recipe-step=2), so your position in the chain survives a reload or sharing the link mid-way.
Two safeguards show up in practice. If the result exceeds the next tool’s limit — over 50 Mio, say — continuing is refused with an explicit message rather than a silent failure. And if the link contains an unknown or incompatible identifier, it is dropped and flagged: the valid remainder of the chain still runs.
Four recipes, ready to copy
Send a complete bundle — merge exhibits, compress, encrypt:
https://documentflare.com/en/tools/merge-pdf/#recipe=compress-pdf,protect-pdfMerge accepts 2 to 20 files (50 Mio total); compression trims the weight before sending; protection encrypts the result with AES-256. Share the password over a separate channel, as always.
Disclose a document without excess data — redact, clean, encrypt:
https://documentflare.com/en/tools/redact-pdf/#recipe=sanitize-pdf,protect-pdfThe redaction tool detects nine types of personal data and rasterizes the censored pages; cleanup then strips metadata, JavaScript, attachments and annotations — everything visual redaction cannot reach (details in cleaning a PDF before sharing). This is the sequence from our lawyers’ confidentiality checklist, chained here by the link itself.
From scan to light archive — capture, deskew, compress:
https://documentflare.com/en/tools/scan-to-pdf/#recipe=deskew-pdf,compress-pdfCamera scanning assembles photos into a PDF; deskew straightens tilted pages (best-effort, up to 100 pages); compression finishes the job. Useful for digitizing supporting documents without handing them to a cloud scan app.
Prepare a document for web publishing — organize pages, then optimize:
https://documentflare.com/en/tools/organize-pdf/#recipe=optimise-webThumbnail-based organizing reorders, rotates or removes pages; web optimization prepares the file for faster online loading.
Building your own recipe
Two methods, neither involves writing code:
- By hand. Append
#recipe=followed by comma-separated tool identifiers to the first tool’s address. Identifiers are the catalogue ids you see in URLs:compress-pdf,sanitize-pdf,rotate-pages,flatten-pdf… - From the interface. Every tool page shows a “Then chain with” selector and a “Copy recipe link” button. The list only offers genuinely chainable tools, and the copied link extends the current chain — you can build a sequence step by step, then share it.
Not every tool is a valid step. A step receives the PDF produced by the previous one: it must be local, in production, and accept a single PDF as input. Merge, compare or image-to-PDF need several files or a different input — they can open a chain but never sit inside it. Symmetrically, a tool whose output is not a PDF (JPG export, ZIP of extracted pages, Markdown summary) ends the chain: there is nothing to continue with.
Recipe or batch: don’t mix them up
Both automate, but orthogonally. Batch mode applies one operation to N files in parallel (twenty PDFs compressed at once). A recipe applies N operations to one file in sequence. They even combine: nothing stops a compression batch followed by a recipe on the result.
The limits, honestly
- Five steps maximum in the fragment — extra identifiers are dropped. A readable URL stays a short URL.
- The link does not carry the file. The recipe’s recipient applies the chain to their own document; this is not file sharing.
- Settings are not remembered. Password, page selection, rotation angle: everything is re-entered at each pass. Deliberately so — a parameter in a URL would be readable by anyone who intercepts the link.
- Each step keeps its own limits: 50 Mio and 1,000 pages for most tools, one file. A result too heavy for the next step stops the chain cleanly.
- No hands-free execution. The recipe guides, it does not run itself: each step waits for your input, which leaves room to review a redaction or tune a compression.
Verifiable, like everything else
The recipe is an elegant special case of the “no upload” promise: not only does the document never leave, the workflow itself is known to no server. Open the Network tab of your developer tools and follow a full chain: no request contains the fragment — structurally, the # is never sent — and none carries your PDF. The full protocol is in the network test section of our article on PDF tools without upload.
For regulated work — law firms, medical records, HR files or anything under a DPO’s responsibility — a shared recipe doubles as a written procedure: everyone applies the same chain, in the same order, while the document never left the workstation.
