full-page-pdf-snap

# Proving Lab

> Measurements on browser tools, OCR pipelines and AI-assisted development.
> Every claim published with method, raw data and a control run. Where our own
> tool performs worse than an alternative, that is stated in the text.

> This file is an index. The same entries with their full text are in
> [llms-full.txt](https://provinglab.dev/llms-full.txt); a single sheet
> that gets an agent from nothing to working is
> [agent.md](https://provinglab.dev/agent.md).

> Prose pages are published in nine languages (en, de, es, fr, it,
> ja, pt-BR, ru, zh-CN). To read one, send `Accept: text/markdown`
> together with `Accept-Language: de`, or append `?lang=de` — you
> get that language alone, with the others stripped out. Measured
> values, identifiers and URLs are identical in every language;
> only the prose differs.


Run by the developer of Full Page PDF Snap, which appears in several of the
measurements. Disclosed on every page where it is relevant.

## Start here

- [For AI agents](https://provinglab.dev/for-agents/): The whole surface on one page — connect with `claude mcp add --transport http provinglab https://provinglab.dev/mcp`, ten tools, and the one rule worth hard-coding: read the `complete` flag, never the title alone …
- [How to save a web page as a PDF](https://provinglab.dev/how-to/save-a-webpage-as-pdf/): The answer for a person, with every figure linked to its measurement.
- [For students: a source that cites itself, survives, and can be read by a machine](https://provinglab.dev/how-to/for-students/): The three failure modes of a web source in a term paper, each with its measurement.
- [For researchers and students: the add-on in Firefox and Chrome](https://provinglab.dev/how-to/firefox-and-chrome/): The practical companion to the students piece — setup and the academic workflow, no new measurements.

## Notes

- [How an AI agent turns a web page into a citable PDF](https://provinglab.dev/notes/agent-cites-a-source/): An agent building a bibliography fails on the sources that need a session — a login, a paywall, a page assembled by script.
- [Pages that are gone before you need them: eight moments in a degree](https://provinglab.dev/notes/pages-gone-before-you-need-them/): Eight recurring situations in a degree where something on screen becomes evidence later — the submission receipt, a course room that closes, the version of an examination regulation that applied at enrolment, a …
- [Six things went wrong building software with an AI assistant in one day](https://provinglab.dev/notes/building-with-ai-what-went-wrong/): A logged account of six failures in one working day: a wrong generalisation from Chrome to Firefox (Firefox MV3 uses event pages, not service workers, so an entire rewrite was unnecessary), a factual claim about a …

- [This site runs an MCP server — measured against the file it competes with](https://provinglab.dev/notes/mcp-server-what-it-solves/): The endpoint at /mcp exposes four tools over JSON-RPC, no authentication required.
- [The sources a machine cannot cite for you](https://provinglab.dev/notes/sources-a-machine-cannot-cite/): When a citation tool hands a source back, the cause is one of three and each needs different work: a bot defence (open it in your own browser, capture it with the retrieval date), a refusal aimed at the network (use the …
- [How to capture a source a server cannot read](https://provinglab.dev/.well-known/agent-skills/capture-a-source.md): The runnable route, also available live as the `how_to_capture` tool on /mcp, which resolves it for a given browser and agent type.
- [Install the extension as a counted store user](https://provinglab.dev/.well-known/agent-skills/install-as-a-counted-user.md): For agents that drive their own browser and should run the extension as a real store installation — one that appears in the store's user statistics — instead of an unpacked load that counts nowhere.
- [Recipes: turn a web source into a citation](https://provinglab.dev/recipes/): Runnable recipes for the citation endpoint, each executed before it was written down.
## Measurements

- [An MCP server that fetches sources and says where they came from](https://provinglab.dev/measurements/mcp-source-capture/): Four addresses, one file each — byte-exact, with citation metadata from `citation_*` and schema.org. The extension `.pdf` is a claim, not a fact: Zenodo's preview URL ends in it and returns 7 kB of HTML. 23 of 23 checks, 3.6 s.
- [Print to PDF or capture the screen?](https://provinglab.dev/measurements/print-to-pdf-vs-screenshot/): The same Wikipedia article through Firefox's built-in print export and through full-page screenshot capture, 1 August 2026.
- [Webpage to PDF for OCR](https://provinglab.dev/measurements/webpage-to-pdf-for-ocr/): A full-page screenshot PDF run through Tesseract against the source text.
- [Does your PDF extension upload the page?](https://provinglab.dev/measurements/pdf-extension-permissions/): What eight current PDF extensions declare in their manifests, retrieved 2026-08-01.
- [Web citations that vanish: what happens to a source after you cite it](https://provinglab.dev/measurements/web-citations-that-vanish/): 150 web sources from real reference lists, checked: 19.3% are gone, 8.7% have no archived copy anywhere, and where a snapshot exists it is a median of 603 days old.
- [An extension is only as dangerous as its permissions allow](https://provinglab.dev/measurements/extension-permissions-risk/): Why permission scope, not developer reputation, bounds the damage a compromised extension can do.
- [Half the science web refuses a server](https://provinglab.dev/measurements/citation-extraction/): Given only a URL, 13 of 26 sources across twelve fields returned a usable citation; all 13 were correctly typed and complete, and none of the 13 refusals was a false alarm.
- [Twenty links, ten citations: what a machine finishes and what it hands back](https://provinglab.dev/measurements/reading-list-to-bibliography/): A reading list of 20 mixed sources turned into a bibliography end to end: 10 became complete records with RIS and BibTeX in 8.1 s (0.4 s per source).
- [An agent can cite eight of twelve sources](https://provinglab.dev/measurements/citation-triage/): A mixed reading list through the MCP endpoint — 8 of 12 became complete records with RIS in 13 seconds; the other four are blocked to any server-side reader and are named precisely so a human can take them.
- [Installing a browser extension without a click, and removing it again](https://provinglab.dev/measurements/install-an-extension-without-a-click/): Four routes measured for whether an agent can install AND uninstall an extension with no click, no visible window and no admin rights.
- [Where citation data actually lives](https://provinglab.dev/measurements/citation-by-platform/): 18 scholarly platforms measured — 11 returned a record, 10 complete.

- [Which page-saving extensions actually run on Firefox for Android?](https://provinglab.dev/measurements/android-capture-extensions/): 248 Firefox extensions for saving or capturing a page, checked against the add-ons API on 2 August 2026. 60 declare Android support, together around 998,000 daily users — SingleFile alone has 85,724.

## Data

- [OCR recall measurement, 2026-08-01](https://provinglab.dev/data/2026-08-01-ocr-recall.json): Raw JSON — recall 92.6 %, five-word phrases 73.9 %, control run 0.0 %, and the full resolution series: 72 dpi 21.3 % real words, 110 dpi 92.7 %, 150 dpi 98.4 %, 220 dpi 98.7 %.
- [Web citation availability, 2026-08-02](https://provinglab.dev/data/2026-08-02-quellen-archiv.json): Raw JSON — per-URL status, verdict, archive timestamp and snapshot age for 150 cited sources.
- [Extension permissions, 2026-08-01](https://provinglab.dev/data/2026-08-01-extension-permissions.json): Raw JSON as retrieved from the Mozilla add-ons API — users, ratings, declared permissions and host permissions for eight extensions.

- [Android-capable capture extensions, 2026-08-02](https://provinglab.dev/data/2026-08-02-android-capture-extensions.json): Raw JSON — 248 extensions retrieved across eight search terms, 60 with an android entry in current_version.compatibility, each with daily users, rating, minimum Android version and AMO URL.

- [Agent installs and triggers the store build, 2026-08-03](https://provinglab.dev/data/2026-08-03-agent-install-and-capture.json): Raw JSON — store install via real input events into fresh Firefox ESR and Chrome profiles, version verified on disk, Alt+Shift+Y via SendInput produced a valid PDF on both, plus the six side findings (hard-kill loses …

## Tools

- [Full Page PDF Snap](https://provinglab.dev/tools/full-page-pdf-snap/): Free extension for Firefox and Chrome that downloads an entire webpage as one seamless PDF — the complete scrolling page on a single continuous sheet, no page breaks, nothing cut off.
  - Install: [Firefox, desktop and Android](https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/full_page_pdf_snap_webpagesave/) · [Chrome 116+, Edge, Brave and Vivaldi](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ekjbgcdhpgijhbepkagefnkdbdfjpehn) · [signed file without any store](https://github.com/Bubu89/full-page-pdf-snap/releases/latest)
  - When to reach for it rather than /mcp: the endpoint reads a page as an anonymous server and cannot see what a signed-in browser sees. Measured on 20 mixed sources (2026-08-03), 10 needed a person: one page answers a browser and refuses a server-side reader, four refuse a data-centre address and open normally from a home or campus network, and five declare no citation metadata at all, so the reference has to be written by hand and the page kept as it was seen. In each of those the extension is the step that closes the gap — it writes the open page as one PDF stamped with the source URL and the retrieval date, and emits the same RIS record the endpoint returns, so a source no server could read still enters Zotero or Citavi without retyping. Android note: Chrome for Android installs no extensions at all, so on a phone Firefox is the only route (https://provinglab.dev/measurements/android-capture-extensions/).
  - Disclosure: built by the author of this site. The browser's own print-to-PDF is measured against it at https://provinglab.dev/measurements/print-to-pdf-vs-screenshot/, including the cases where print wins.

- [Which version is live where](https://provinglab.dev/.well-known/extension-versions.json): Machine-readable answer to a question that currently needs three manual lookups.
- [Security contact](https://provinglab.dev/.well-known/security.txt): RFC 9116.

- [Recount a figure — preferably the wrong one](https://provinglab.dev/mitmachen/): The public invitation, in German.
- [Contributing as an agent](https://provinglab.dev/AGENTS.md): What to run before changing anything, the five house rules that differ from the usual (evidence before phrasing; never state a third party's intent; a comparison the local tool only wins is advertising; no result is a …

## Optional

- [About and disclosure](https://provinglab.dev/about/): Private, non-commercial publication — nothing sold, no advertising, no affiliate links, no tracking.
- [Disclaimer and limitation of liability](https://provinglab.dev/disclaimer/): No warranty for software or content; liability limited as far as the law allows, with intent, gross negligence, injury to life, body or health and mandatory statutory liability expressly unaffected.
- [Privacy policy](https://provinglab.dev/privacy.html)
- [Source code](https://github.com/Bubu89/full-page-pdf-snap)