Certificates are one of the highest-volume PDF generation use cases. Online courses issue completion certificates. Conferences generate attendance certificates. Companies produce training certifications. Award programs create recognition documents.

The common thread: you need to generate the same document hundreds or thousands of times, each personalized with different recipient data. Doing this manually doesn’t scale. Building a custom renderer is overkill. And you shouldn’t need to hire a designer just to make a certificate look professional.

With AgentPDF, you don’t. Build the template yourself in the visual editor, or let your AI agent design it programmatically. The output is deterministic — certificate #1 and certificate #5,000 are identical except for the personalized data.

The Certificate Generation Problem

Generating certificates at scale has specific challenges:

You don’t have a designer — Most teams generating certificates are engineering or ops teams, not design teams. You need professional-looking output without professional design skills.
Variable recipient data — Every certificate has a unique name, date, course title, or achievement. These fields must be positioned correctly regardless of text length.
Bulk generation — After a course ends or an event wraps up, you need to generate hundreds of certificates at once. Your system needs to handle the volume.
Consistent output — Every certificate must look identical except for the personalized data. If the rendering engine produces slightly different output on different runs, recipients notice.
Verification — Many certificates include unique IDs or QR codes. These need to be generated and embedded per certificate.

Two Ways to Create Certificate Templates

Option 1: Build It Yourself in the Editor

AgentPDF’s visual editor lets anyone create a certificate template — no design background required. Add borders, logos, text fields, and decorative elements. The editor uses the same deterministic rendering engine as the API, so what you see is exactly what the PDF will look like.

Option 2: Let Your AI Agent Design It

This is what sets AgentPDF apart. Our layout rendering engine is simple enough for AI agents to work with directly. Your agent can:

Create the certificate layout from scratch via the API or MCP server
Set up borders, text positioning, logo placement, and variable fields
Define smart variables for recipient name, course title, date, certificate ID
Preview, iterate, and save the template — all programmatically

No designer. No Figma. No back-and-forth. Your AI agent designs the template, then immediately starts generating certificates from it. This is especially powerful when you need different certificate designs for different courses or events — your agent can create a new template on the fly.

Generate Certificates via API

Once your template exists (whether you or your agent created it), generation is a single API call:

curl -X POST https://api.agentpdf.ai/v1/generate \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "templateId": "course-completion-cert",
    "variables": {
      "recipientName": "Sarah Chen",
      "courseName": "Advanced Machine Learning",
      "completionDate": "February 15, 2026",
      "certificateId": "CERT-ML-2026-04821",
      "instructorName": "Dr. James Rodriguez",
      "grade": "With Distinction"
    }
  }'

One API call, one professional certificate PDF. Deterministic — the same data always produces the exact same output.

For batch generation, loop through your participant list. AgentPDF handles high-volume generation without the performance degradation you get from headless browser-based tools.

Why Deterministic Rendering Matters for Certificates

Certificates are visual documents. They rely on precise positioning of decorative elements, fonts, and images. Browser-based PDF generators (Puppeteer, wkhtmltopdf) fail here because:

Font rendering varies — The certificate font on your Mac looks different from the same font in a Linux Docker container. Recipients notice.
Layout drifts — Elements shift by a few pixels depending on the rendering environment. For certificates, that inconsistency is visible and unprofessional.
Performance at scale — Generating 500 certificates with Puppeteer means 500 Chrome instances. It’s slow and resource-heavy.

AgentPDF’s rendering engine is purpose-built for PDF — no browser involved. The output is deterministic regardless of where generation runs. Every recipient gets the exact same quality certificate.

Real-World Certificate Use Cases

Online learning platforms — Student completes a course, platform calls AgentPDF, certificate is available for download immediately.

Corporate training — Employees pass compliance training, certificates are generated automatically and stored in their records.

Conferences and events — Generate attendance certificates for every participant. Personalized with name, session tracks, and event details.

Professional certifications — Issue formal credentials with unique verification IDs. Deterministic rendering means you can regenerate and verify any certificate.

Award programs — Employee of the month, hackathon winners, sales achievements. Your agent designs the award template, generates one for each recipient.

Let AI Agents Own the Certificate Workflow

With AgentPDF’s MCP server, AI agents can manage everything:

Design the template — Agent creates the certificate layout using the simple rendering engine
Query your LMS — Agent finds students who completed the course
Generate certificates — One API call per recipient, deterministic output
Deliver them — Email the PDF, upload to the LMS, log the certificate ID

The agent doesn’t just fill in templates someone else designed — it designs the template, generates from it, and delivers the result. End to end.

Get Started

You don’t need a designer to create professional certificates. Build templates in the editor or let your AI agent create them, then generate deterministic PDFs at scale.

Try AgentPDF free →

How to Automate Certificate Generation With a PDF API