1. Client creates a custom label and we store it in s3 2. They select x inventory items + click print 3. We retrieve and send the label file + inventory data to a service that interpolates the data into each template, renders to pdf, merges them, and forwards it to our printing service.

We certainly could do the work on the client, but they're making this request in a context where neither the label nor the libraries need to be loaded; in fact, in our server-side implementation, it could be done with a single api call. Doing it all client side would strongly couple the client to the technology.

Also, we re-used this api in two applications, one of which never loaded the editor (along with its dependencies).

TLDR; a weird hack was better than violating separation of conerns.