{"type":"user","uuid":"c1a0","timestamp":"2026-07-02T09:14:02Z","message":{"role":"user","content":"I have a folder of about 400 Markdown notes and I want one PDF per note, with our letterhead on every page. What's the fastest way?"}}
{"type":"assistant","uuid":"c1a1","timestamp":"2026-07-02T09:14:05Z","message":{"role":"assistant","model":"claude-opus-5","content":[{"type":"thinking","thinking":"Four hundred files rules out doing this by hand. They need a repeatable template plus a batch run, and the letterhead has to live in the template rather than in each document."},{"type":"text","text":"Two pieces: a **template** that carries the letterhead, and a **batch export** that applies it to the whole folder in one pass.\n\n1. Build the template once — running header, footer and page margins.\n2. Point batch export at the folder and pick that template.\n\nOne pass, 400 PDFs, identical letterhead on every page."}]}}
{"type":"user","uuid":"c1a2","timestamp":"2026-07-02T09:15:41Z","message":{"role":"user","content":"Show me what the template config looks like."}}
{"type":"assistant","uuid":"c1a3","timestamp":"2026-07-02T09:15:44Z","message":{"role":"assistant","model":"claude-opus-5","content":[{"type":"tool_use","id":"t1","name":"Read","input":{"file_path":"~/Documents/notes/.mdsyntax/template.json"}},{"type":"text","text":"Reading the template you already have."}]}}
{"type":"user","uuid":"c1a4","timestamp":"2026-07-02T09:15:45Z","message":{"role":"user","content":[{"type":"tool_result","tool_use_id":"t1","content":"{\n  \"name\": \"Letterhead\",\n  \"header\": \"{{title}}\",\n  \"footer\": \"Page {{page}} of {{pages}}\",\n  \"margins\": { \"top\": \"28mm\", \"bottom\": \"20mm\", \"inner\": \"25mm\", \"outer\": \"18mm\" },\n  \"theme\": \"Paper\"\n}"}]}}
{"type":"assistant","uuid":"c1a5","timestamp":"2026-07-02T09:15:49Z","message":{"role":"assistant","model":"claude-opus-5","content":[{"type":"text","text":"That's the whole thing. The placeholders are filled per document at export time:\n\n| Placeholder | Becomes |\n| --- | --- |\n| `{{title}}` | The document's first heading, or its filename |\n| `{{page}}` | The current page number |\n| `{{pages}}` | The total page count |\n\nThe `top` margin is larger than the others to leave room for the header — a header with no margin behind it collides with the first line of text, which is the single most common thing to get wrong here.\n\nMath and diagrams survive the export as vectors, so a formula like $E = mc^2$ stays sharp when the PDF is zoomed rather than turning into a blurred bitmap."}]}}
{"type":"user","uuid":"c1a6","timestamp":"2026-07-02T09:17:12Z","message":{"role":"user","content":"Perfect. How long will 400 files take?"}}
{"type":"assistant","uuid":"c1a7","timestamp":"2026-07-02T09:17:15Z","message":{"role":"assistant","model":"claude-opus-5","content":[{"type":"text","text":"On an Apple-silicon Mac, notes of this size run roughly 8–15 per second, so 400 files is well under a minute. Documents with many diagrams are the slow ones, because each Mermaid graph is laid out before the page is drawn.\n\nIt runs locally — nothing is uploaded, and the whole batch completes with the network switched off."}]}}