The key part of the AGPL is phrased: > if you modify the Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a

The key part of the AGPL is phrased: > if you modify the Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source So note the "interacting with it remotely" language isn't specific to just a network connection. So a reasonable interpretation would absolutely be that your users are "interacting remotely" with the PDF tool in the scenario you describe, no matter how many thin layers you put in between. So this then goes to the question of how a court would decide the boundary ... clearly the connectivity of the internet means nearly every computer and software on earth is theoretically linked by a network. So that is where they would look at how direct the interaction with the AGPL software was, and how critically and specifically dependent on that interaction your software is. If everything a user does gets transformed into a completely different form by the time it hits the AGPL software then they aren't interacting with it remotely - they are interacting with your software remotely and your software is interacting with the AGPL. Similarly, if you could trivially substitute the AGPL for something equivalent and the end user wouldn't notice, that would also argue they aren't really interacting with the AGPL software specifically. Of course, nothing is really clear until it goes to court, but this my best understanding of current state.