App ecosystem: inline document preview inside record pages (DocumentViewer is modal-only)

[irixzafra]

Use case

We're building an ATS as a Twenty App. A recruiter needs to read a candidate's CV (PDF) while taking notes and running actions on the same record page — i.e. the document must be visible inline and persistent, side-by-side with the record, not in a blocking overlay.

What already exists

Twenty ships a capable host-side DocumentViewer (@cyntler/react-doc-viewer, PDF + ~11 formats). But it's only reachable through GlobalFilePreviewModal — clicking a file opens a modal, which blocks interaction with the record underneath. There's no native way to embed that viewer inline in a record page.

The gap for App builders

The natural place to put an inline viewer from an App is a FrontComponent, but the Remote DOM sandbox (correctly) forces sandbox on the FC iframe, and in our testing Chrome's native PDF viewer refuses to initialize inside any sandboxed iframe — so a real PDF can't render inside an FC. Today the only inline workaround is rasterizing the PDF to images, which loses text/selection/multipage fidelity. (To be clear: we are not asking to weaken the FC sandbox — the security direction there makes sense.)

Proposed direction (we'd be happy to contribute the PR)

Expose the existing DocumentViewer for inline, host-side composition — e.g. one of:

1. A record-page widget / page-layout tab type that renders a document field's file inline (host-side, outside the FC sandbox), or
2. A small refactor extracting the viewer from GlobalFilePreviewModal so it can be embedded, plus a supported way for an App's record-page layout to point at it.

Question for maintainers

Is inline document preview something you'd want upstream, and if so which shape fits your record-page architecture best? We have a working implementation and can open a PR shaped to your preference.