tex-mcp-web

Review a LaTeX paper from its rendered PDF, on a desktop, tablet, or phone, while Claude Code or Codex edits the source.

Select words in the PDF, or draw a box over part of a figure, and write what should change. Press Call agent, the bell above the comments, when they are ready. The agent edits the source, compiles, and answers in the thread, at times with a wording to apply. The keys at the bottom right are the ones pressed.

⭐ If this helps your writing, please give it a star. It helps others find the project.

Quick start

1. Paste this into Claude Code or Codex, and start the agent again once it is done:

   Install tex-mcp-web by following https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MiiKiyoshi/tex-mcp-web/main/INSTALL.md

   The agent checks for Python 3.10 or newer and latexmk, shows where it will install and which agents it will register with, and installs once you agree.

2. Start the agent in the paper's folder and say do tex init. It finds the main .tex file and a free port, shows you the settings, and writes .tex-mcp-web.yaml once you agree.

3. Open http://localhost:<port>. The agent acts when you press Call agent. With the plugin the install adds, a Claude Code session started in the paper's folder waits for that press by itself. In Codex, or in an older Claude Code that does not support plugin monitors, say do tex listen first, and again after the agent restarts.

Related MCP server: overleaf-mcp

Point at what words cannot

For a figure, a table or a page's layout, take the box tool beside pan and pointer in the PDF's toolbar, draw a box over it, and say what is wrong. The agent works from the box as from any comment.

Answer your co-authors' Overleaf comments, with the agent

Press Connect Overleaf in the top bar and paste the project's link. Its comment threads come into a tab of their own, Comments with a leaf, beside the comments you write here. In a thread you talk with the agent, which drafts the reply for Overleaf under it, and you send that reply once it reads right.

Your talk with the agent stays on the page, in the thread between your co-authors' messages, so the whole exchange reads in order. Overleaf gets only the replies you send.

Keeping the paper's files in step with Overleaf, by git, by hand or live, is in Working with Overleaf.

Raise a point with your co-authors on Overleaf

Ask the agent, in a note or in any thread, to put a question to your co-authors. It drafts a new thread on the lines in question, which waits in the leaf Comments tab under new thread. Edit it there and send it, and it opens on Overleaf on those lines.

Go through the comments by keyboard

The comment list goes by keys, as a notebook's cells do, and the editor has Vim keys. A ring marks the comment the keys act on, and the list moves under it, so the eye stays put. K goes between a comment and its words in the source, both ways.

Keys that change the file, post to Overleaf or delete are pressed twice. Once you move by keys, the ringed comment's buttons show their letters. Every key, and the editor's Vim keys, are in Reviewing in detail.

Review on a tablet or phone

The page is served where the agent runs. From a phone, forward its port over SSH from that machine, with Termux on Android or Termius on iOS, then open http://localhost:<port> in the phone's browser:

ssh -L <port>:localhost:<port> <the machine the agent runs on>

In Termius the same forward is a Local rule in its Port Forwarding screen.

Writes by your rules, in your field's terms

Rules told to an agent in conversation do not last. After its context is compacted a few times it writes as if never told, and what Claude Code remembers for one paper's folder does not reach the next paper in the same field. Kept in files, your writing rules and your field's terms serve every paper that names them, and in Claude Code the agent cannot use tex-mcp's tools until it has read them, again after every compaction (Codex does not hold the tools back like this yet).

Write the rules you hold a paper to in a GUIDELINE.md, in a folder of its own under ~/.config/tex-mcp-web/guidelines/, and set guideline to the folder's name. A guideline can build on another, so the rules for every paper and those of one field stay apart:

~/.config/tex-mcp-web/guidelines/
├── plain-writing/GUIDELINE.md    rules for every paper
└── my-field/GUIDELINE.md         a field's own, opening with the lines below

---
extends: plain-writing
---

With guideline: my-field, the agent reads plain-writing first and my-field after it.

Left alone, an agent also describes a concept in words of its own where the papers of your field use one term. Convert the papers yours builds on to Markdown with marker, keep them in one folder, and set references to it.

Configuration

do tex init writes .tex-mcp-web.yaml at the paper's root:

main: main.tex
watch:
- '*.tex'
- '*.bib'
ignore:
- '*_backup.tex'
compiler: auto
port: 8765
guideline: my-field
translation:
  language: Korean
  instructions: Keep cell names in English.
overleaf: https://www.overleaf.com/project/0123456789abcdef01234567

Every field is in Configuration.

See also

html-mcp-web reviews an AI agent's HTML slides or report the same way and hands finished slides over as an editable PowerPoint deck.

Acknowledgements

tex-mcp-web is a hard fork of queelius/scholia at commit e6c7454 (version 0.6.1), independently developed since under the MIT license. See LICENSE. PDF viewing uses EmbedPDF and its PDFium WebAssembly engine, whose notices are in tex_mcp_web/static/embedpdf/LICENSE and tex_mcp_web/static/embedpdf/LICENSE.pdfium. The bundled viewer differs from its release only in its zoom gesture, described in Reviewing in detail. Source highlighting and completion use Ace Editor builds 1.44.0 under the BSD-3-Clause license, and its notice is in tex_mcp_web/static/ace/LICENSE.