What DocViewKit is
Product boundary, deployment model, and the problems DocViewKit is designed to solve.
A viewer SDK, not an office suite
DocViewKit is a browser-local, read-only document viewer SDK for software vendors. It presents, searches, and locates supported Office, PDF, ODF, iWork, and related documents without sending document bytes to a third-party conversion service.
DocViewKit does not provide document editing, collaboration, OCR, RAG, embeddings, model calls, or AI answers. AI knowledge-base and document-Q&A products are target integrations, not features inside the SDK.
Why browser-local
- Document bytes stay in the host browser or WebView during normal viewing.
- The host does not need to operate a document-conversion cluster.
- JS, Worker, Wasm, fonts, and codecs can be self-hosted with the application.
- Macros, scripts, launch actions, and active external content are not executed.
Local processing is a deployment property, not a promise of universal pixel identity. Format support is bounded and maturity is published explicitly.
Delivery artifacts
| Artifact | Access | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| @docviewkit/viewer | Public | Framework-independent Viewer with the complete supported format set and retained DocViewKit branding. |
| @docviewkit/sdk | Controlled commercial delivery | Engine APIs for custom document experiences. |
The public Viewer and controlled commercial SDK have separate license terms. Engine and white-label production rights require the corresponding signed commercial license.