Pagedrop Technical Overview

How we turn GitHub Gists into shareable, annotatable pages — without ever storing your data.

🏗️ Architecture

Pagedrop is a thin rendering layer on top of GitHub's Gist infrastructure. Your content lives in GitHub — we just make it beautiful and collaborative.

graph LR
    A["🧑‍💻 User / AI Agent"] -->|"creates gist"| B["GitHub Gist API"]
    B -->|"stores content"| C["GitHub Storage"]
    A -->|"visits pagedrop.ai/g/..."| D["CloudFront CDN"]
    D --> E["Lambda@Edge"]
    E -->|"fetches gist"| B
    E -->|"injects UI"| F["Rendered Page"]
    F -->|"annotations"| G["Browser localStorage"]
    F -->|"Pro annotations"| H["DynamoDB"]

    style A fill:#1e293b,stroke:#5eead4,color:#e7ecf5
    style D fill:#1e293b,stroke:#7c83ff,color:#e7ecf5
    style F fill:#1e293b,stroke:#7c83ff,color:#e7ecf5
    style C fill:#1e293b,stroke:#5eead4,color:#e7ecf5
    style G fill:#1e293b,stroke:#5eead4,color:#e7ecf5
    style H fill:#1e293b,stroke:#5eead4,color:#e7ecf5
    style B fill:#1e293b,stroke:#5eead4,color:#e7ecf5
    style E fill:#1e293b,stroke:#7c83ff,color:#e7ecf5

The flow is simple: your AI agent (or you) creates a GitHub Gist containing HTML. Visit pagedrop.ai/g/{user}/{gist_id} and Lambda@Edge fetches the gist, injects the annotation and revision UI, and serves a polished page through CloudFront.

🔒 Privacy Model

We built Pagedrop with a strong opinion: your content is yours.

🔑 No content storage 🔐 No auth required 🗂️ No databases for content 🌐 GitHub is the source of truth
What Where it lives Who controls it
Your HTML content GitHub Gist (your account) You — delete the gist, the page is gone
Revision history GitHub Gist revisions You — GitHub tracks every edit
Annotations (Free) Browser localStorage You — local to your device, never sent to us
Annotations (Pro) DynamoDB You — deletable on request, keyed to gist
Share links DynamoDB You — delete the gist to invalidate

We never see, cache, or index your content beyond the transient Lambda execution. CloudFront caches rendered pages for ~5 minutes for performance, then evicts them.

✨ Features

⚡ Instant Publishing

Create a GitHub Gist → get a clean URL at pagedrop.ai/g/user/id. No build step, no deploy pipeline. Works in seconds.

💬 Annotations

Select any text on a page to leave Google Docs-style comments. Export annotations as structured markdown for your AI agent to process.

🔄 Revision History

Every gh gist edit creates a revision. Navigate between versions with the floating revision bar. Track how your content evolves.

🔗 Share Links

Generate shareable links with configurable visibility. Control whether viewers see annotations, revisions, or just the content.

📱 Mobile-First

Annotation UI designed for thumb-friendly mobile interaction. Review and comment from your phone, tablet, or desktop.

🤖 Agent-Native

Built for AI workflows. Your agent creates the gist, you review on Pagedrop, leave annotations, paste them back into chat. The loop closes.

🚀 How It Works

1

Install the Pagedrop skill — Add it to your AI agent (OpenClaw, Claude Code, or any agent with GitHub access).

2

Ask for a Pagedrop — Tell your agent "create a pagedrop about X" and it generates a polished HTML page, uploads it as a gist, and gives you the link.

3

Review & annotate — Open the link on any device. Select text to leave comments. The annotation UI appears right where you need it.

4

Iterate — Export your annotations, paste them back to your agent. It updates the gist, creating a new revision. Repeat until it's perfect.

⚙️ Technical Details

Component Technology Purpose
CDN AWS CloudFront Global edge caching, SSL termination
Rendering Lambda@Edge (Node.js) Fetch gist, inject UI, serve page
Content GitHub Gist API Storage, versioning, access control
Auth GitHub OAuth Pro features, persistent annotations
Annotations (Pro) DynamoDB Server-side annotation storage
Payments Stripe Pro subscriptions ($5/mo)
IaC Terraform Entire infrastructure as code
✦ Made with pagedrop.ai