diff --git a/services/clsi/app/js/ConversionController.js b/services/clsi/app/js/ConversionController.js
index e208498b63..53478aa8af 100644
--- a/services/clsi/app/js/ConversionController.js
+++ b/services/clsi/app/js/ConversionController.js
@@ -1,4 +1,7 @@
 import crypto from 'node:crypto'
+import { execFile } from 'node:child_process'
+import os from 'node:os'
+import { promisify } from 'node:util'
 import logger from '@overleaf/logger'
 import { expressify } from '@overleaf/promise-utils'
 import fs from 'node:fs/promises'
@@ -16,6 +19,8 @@ import Settings from '@overleaf/settings'
 import Path from 'node:path'
 import { z } from '@overleaf/validation-tools'
 
+const execFileAsync = promisify(execFile)
+
 const CONVERSION_CONFIGS = {
   docx: { extension: 'docx' },
   markdown: { extension: 'zip' },
@@ -251,9 +256,10 @@ async function convertProjectToDocument(req, res) {
   }
 }
 
+// Generates a JPEG thumbnail of page 1 of the compiled output.pdf using
+// pdftocairo (poppler-utils, installed in the CLSI base image). Does NOT
+// require ENABLE_PDF_CONVERSIONS or the pdftocairo Docker image.
 async function thumbnailFromBuild(req, res) {
-  if (!Settings.enablePdfConversions) return res.sendStatus(404)
-
   const { project_id: projectId, user_id: userId, build_id: buildId } = req.params
   if (!buildId?.match(OutputCacheManager.BUILD_REGEX)) return res.sendStatus(400)
 
@@ -272,20 +278,27 @@ async function thumbnailFromBuild(req, res) {
     return res.sendStatus(404)
   }
 
-  const conversionId = crypto.randomUUID()
-  let jpegPath
-  try {
-    jpegPath = await ConversionManager.promises.convertPDFToJPEGWithLock(
-      conversionId,
-      pdfPath,
-      'thumbnail'
-    )
-  } catch (err) {
-    logger.warn({ err, projectId, buildId }, 'thumbnail conversion failed')
-    return res.sendStatus(500)
-  }
+  const tmpDir = await fs.mkdtemp(Path.join(os.tmpdir(), 'clsi-thumb-'))
+  const outputBase = Path.join(tmpDir, 'thumb')
+  const jpegPath = outputBase + '.jpg'
 
   try {
+    await execFileAsync(
+      'pdftocairo',
+      [
+        '-jpeg',
+        '-jpegopt', 'quality=50',
+        '-singlefile',
+        '-scale-to-x', '190',
+        '-scale-to-y', '-1',
+        '-f', '1',
+        '-l', '1',
+        pdfPath,
+        outputBase,
+      ],
+      { timeout: 30000 }
+    )
+
     const jpegStat = await fs.stat(jpegPath)
     res.setHeader('Content-Type', 'image/jpeg')
     res.setHeader('Content-Length', jpegStat.size)
@@ -293,10 +306,11 @@ async function thumbnailFromBuild(req, res) {
     res.setHeader('X-Content-Type-Options', 'nosniff')
     const readStream = fsSync.createReadStream(jpegPath)
     await pipeline(readStream, res)
+  } catch (err) {
+    logger.warn({ err, projectId, buildId }, 'thumbnail generation failed')
+    if (!res.headersSent) res.sendStatus(500)
   } finally {
-    await fs
-      .rm(Path.dirname(jpegPath), { recursive: true, force: true })
-      .catch(() => {})
+    await fs.rm(tmpDir, { recursive: true, force: true }).catch(() => {})
   }
 }