Edge & serverless

TeX can’t run on the edge — there’s no child process to spawn. platex handles this with a dedicated edge-safe entry point that only ever talks to the remote service.

@nandan-varma/platex/client

This entry point exposes the same client and handler API as the Node entry, but remote-only. It never imports node:child_process, node:fs, or node:os, so it’s safe to bundle for any runtime with a global fetch:

• Vercel / Next.js Edge Runtime
• Cloudflare Workers
• Bun and Deno
• Browsers

app/api/compile/route.ts — Edge Runtime

export const runtime = 'edge';
import { handleCompileRequest } from '@nandan-varma/platex/client';

export const POST = handleCompileRequest;

Or with a configured client:

export const runtime = 'edge';
import { createPlatexClient, createRequestHandler } from '@nandan-varma/platex/client';

const platex = createPlatexClient({ timeout: 20_000, retry: 2 });
export const POST = createRequestHandler(platex);

A serviceUrl is required

Because there’s no local compilation on the edge, the client needs a service to call. If you invoke .compile() without a serviceUrl configured (and none in PLATEX_SERVICE_URL), it throws immediately with a clear message telling you what’s missing — rather than trying, and failing, to spawn a TeX process that can’t exist on that runtime.

import { createPlatexClient } from '@nandan-varma/platex/client';

const platex = createPlatexClient({
  serviceUrl: 'https://your-platex-service.vercel.app',
});

Tip

Set PLATEX_SERVICE_URL in your edge environment and you can omit serviceUrl entirely — it’s read automatically, same as on Node.

Node vs edge, side by side

	@nandan-varma/platex	@nandan-varma/platex/client
Runtime	Node.js	anything with fetch
Local compilation	✅ system TeX / bundled Tectonic	❌ never
Remote compilation	✅	✅
Node built-ins imported	yes	none
No serviceUrl behavior	falls back to local compile	throws a clear error

Note

Both entry points export the same names — compile, createPlatexClient, handleCompileRequest, createRequestHandler — so moving a route between Node and edge is usually just a matter of changing the import specifier (and ensuring a serviceUrl is set).

Verifying edge-safety

If you’re contributing or bundling manually, you can confirm the client build pulls in no Node built-ins after building:

grep -n "require(\|from '" dist/client.js   # should show no node: specifiers

Where to next

Framework recipesDrop-in handlers for every framework.

How it worksThe three entry points and how they differ.

Deploy the serviceStand up the service your edge client calls.