Pre-crash file recovery for vector files left on client machines

A brand agency delivers finished Illustrator source files to a client. Six months later, that client's in-house junior designer opens the file, crashes twice trying to edit it, gives up, and emails the agency asking them to make the change. The agency charges for the time, the client is annoyed, and nobody understands why the file behaves differently on the client's machine than it did in the studio.

The crash problem doesn't end when a file leaves the hands of the person who made it. Complex vector files — those with embedded assets, multiple artboards, linked fonts, or high layer counts — carry crash risk with them, and the client receiving the file has no diagnostic information about why it's unstable on their hardware or what to simplify to make it workable.

Agencies have no current way to pre-screen a file for the environmental conditions that cause crashes before handing it off. The complaints describe crashes that appear to happen 'for no apparent reason' — but the most common real reasons are file complexity, embedded asset size, and font handling conflicts that vary by machine. None of the vector apps expose this information in any structured way to the person handing the file off.

This is a business because the cost of a crashy handoff file isn't just an annoyance — it's a support ticket, a client relationship problem, and often a billable hour the agency didn't plan for. Agencies hand off source files hundreds of times a year, and a lightweight file audit that flags likely crash triggers before delivery would be a routine step in the production workflow. The need recurs with every project delivery, and the buyer — the agency account manager or production lead — is motivated by client satisfaction, not just personal convenience.

What to build

Build a macOS and Windows desktop utility that ingests an .ai or .afdesign file and outputs a one-page PDF report flagging crash-risk factors — embedded asset size over threshold, missing fonts, layer count, linked file paths that will break on another machine, and file format version mismatches — before the agency sends it to a client.

Where to start

Start with agencies that use Affinity Designer specifically, since the .afdesign format is newer and clients receiving those files are more likely to be running incompatible versions — the version mismatch crash is more acute and more frequent than with Illustrator's more mature ecosystem.

The hard part

Parsing the internal structure of proprietary .ai and .afdesign formats without official SDKs requires reverse engineering or scripting workarounds — and format updates from Adobe or Serif can silently break the analysis with no notice.

How it makes money

One-time purchase per seat for the desktop utility, around $49-79, with an annual update subscription at $19/year to cover format changes — agencies expense it as a production tool and don't need budget approval cycles for a sub-$100 purchase.