Claudeleaf

Bring Claude (and any agent) into Overleaf. Claudeleaf is a reliable TypeScript bridge that drives the Overleaf web editor in real time — listing your projects, opening documents, reading them, and inserting/changing/deleting text — exactly as if a person were typing, so collaborators see the edits live. It ships as an SDK, a CLI, and an MCP server for Claude Code. One signed-in instance can work across all of your projects.

Features

• Real editing, not git. Edits go through Overleaf's live collaboration channel (ShareJS over Socket.IO), so they appear instantly to everyone in the project, attributed to your user.

• All your projects, one instance. List every project you can access and edit any of them by id or name — no project configured up front.

• Full document control — list documents, read text, insert at a position or line/column, replace ranges or literal text, delete ranges or lines, replace a whole document, and create/delete/rename files.

• Compile & error logs — trigger a LaTeX recompile and get back the status plus the parsed errors and warnings (with file and line), or the full raw log.

• Reliable by design — automatic reconnect with document re-join, per-document edit serialization, and server-confirmed edits (no silent loss).

• Zero config, easy sign-in. No credentials stored and nothing to configure: run claudeleaf login once, sign in by hand in the browser that opens (handles reCAPTCHA / SSO / 2FA), and the session is cached.

• Three ways to use it — a TypeScript SDK, a CLI, and an MCP server so Claude Code can work on your projects autonomously.

• Self-hosting friendly — point it at any Overleaf instance with one environment variable.

Related MCP server: Overleaf MCP Server

Getting Started

You don't need to clone or install anything — just Node.js 20+ (which provides npx). Sign in once, then run any command:

npx claudeleaf login       # opens your browser; sign in by hand (handles reCAPTCHA/SSO/2FA)
npx claudeleaf doctor      # checks the session and lists your projects

login drives your installed Google Chrome (or Microsoft Edge); no browser download is needed. The session is cached under ~/.claudeleaf, so every later command reuses it.

Recommended: sign in as a dedicated bot account. Every edit is attributed to whoever is signed in, so create a separate Overleaf account for the agent, invite it into your project as a collaborator (Share → Can edit), and run claudeleaf login as that account. Then every change the bot makes shows up under the bot's name in Overleaf's history — transparent, easy to review or revert, and clearly distinct from your own edits.

Tip: npx claudeleaf@latest … always fetches the newest release. To avoid the per-run fetch, install it once with npm install -g claudeleaf and then just run claudeleaf ….

Use the CLI

Every document command takes a project (id or name) followed by the document path:

npx claudeleaf projects                               # list all your projects
npx claudeleaf ls "My Paper"                          # list documents
npx claudeleaf cat "My Paper" main.tex                # print a document
npx claudeleaf append "My Paper" main.tex "\\section{New}"
npx claudeleaf replace "My Paper" main.tex "foo" "bar"
npx claudeleaf search "My Paper" main.tex "\\section"
npx claudeleaf compile "My Paper"                     # recompile; print errors/warnings
npx claudeleaf compile "My Paper" --warnings --log    # also show warnings + the raw log

Use it with Claude Code (MCP)

Register the MCP server (no clone needed), then ask Claude to work on any of your projects:

claude mcp add claudeleaf -- npx -y claudeleaf mcp

The tools reuse the session from claudeleaf login (they won't pop a browser). Claude can overleaf_list_projects, then read, edit, and compile documents in any project by id or name.

Use the SDK

npm install claudeleaf

import { OverleafClient } from "claudeleaf";

const client = new OverleafClient(); // account-scoped; uses the cached session
for (const p of await client.listProjects()) {
  console.log(p.id, p.name);
}
await client.append("My Paper", "main.tex", "\n% added by an agent\n");
await client.replaceText("My Paper", "main.tex", "Your Paper", "Our Paper");

const compile = await client.compile("My Paper");
console.log(compile.status, compile.errors); // errors carry { message, file, line }

Develop locally

git clone <this repo> && cd claudeleaf
npm install
npm run claudeleaf -- login   # run the CLI from source via tsx
npm test                      # unit tests (live tests auto-skip without a session)
npm run build                 # compile to dist/

Notes

• Claudeleaf edits the live document. Use Overleaf's history to review or revert changes.

• The cached session is a credential; it lives under ~/.claudeleaf with restrictive permissions.