Oleafly ^beta

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Write your next paper with less busywork with a modern scientific writing workspace.

Oleafly is a free, open-source app for research writing. Use it for papers, theses, reports, presentations, books, resumes, and other technical documents. Work in LaTeX, Typst, or Markdown. The source, PDF, citations, figures, checks, Git history, and optional AI tools stay in the same project.

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Start from the kind of work you actually have: a new research project, an existing project, or a template.

Most research-writing workflows are a chain of separate tools: an editor, a compiler, a PDF reader, a bibliography manager, a diagram tool, Git, a review checklist, and perhaps an AI chat that cannot see the project. The work gets spread across windows just when the argument is getting complicated.

Oleafly keeps those tools around one project. The source is still plain text. The PDF sits beside it. You can find a citation from the sentence in front of you, keep a figure as TikZ, and review an assistant's changes before they reach the project.

Oleafly gives you a guided workspace without putting your manuscript behind a proprietary format or a permanent service.

Core work stays on your computer: project files, indexing, compilation with an available local engine, PDF preview, spellchecking, grammar checking, preflight, Git history, checkpoints, and the terminal. An account is not required for these tasks.

The app reaches the network only for actions that need it: literature lookup, DOI metadata, GitHub operations, hosted AI, optional engine and template downloads, and update feeds. Local Ollama models keep model traffic on your computer. When one of these services is unavailable, the app shows an offline or unavailable state.

Provider connections are explicit and separate from the manuscript on disk.

Start with an article, journal paper, thesis, literature review, report, book, Beamer presentation, poster, assignment, letter, bibliography, resume, or diagram. Templates are ordinary source projects with a declared engine, main document, document kind, assets, and preview metadata. You can inspect the files before creating the project.

The gallery filters by engine, category, offline readiness, and ATS suitability. Bundled templates work without a template account. Optional template packs, fonts, and assets download only after you select them.

Import a project ZIP or GitHub repository, convert a DOCX with Pandoc, or use a PDF as the starting point for editable LaTeX. Imports become local project files, so the original source remains untouched while you inspect the result.

PDF reconstruction is deterministic. It extracts the text, layout, equations, and figures it can identify, reports its limits, and leaves you with editable LaTeX instead of an opaque document. If you connect a vision-capable provider, it can help refine an imported project afterward.

Bring an existing project or document into an ordinary local workspace.

Oleafly's library tracks project identity, engine, document kind, bookmarks, preview state, and history. The manuscript itself remains a normal directory. The source can be opened in another editor, inspected in a terminal, shared with a coauthor, or committed with ordinary Git. Oleafly does not require a proprietary document database to compile your work.

The app keeps its own build artifacts and local metadata separate from the source. A project can carry its engine and main-document choices in project.json, so a clone or exported source archive can open with the same project settings.

The CodeMirror editor is backed by a project-wide index. The index covers headings, labels, citation keys, macros, environments, included files, and compile diagnostics across the manuscript.

In LaTeX, Typst, Markdown, and BibTeX you get:

• Engine-aware syntax highlighting for commands, environments, math, comments, markup, and bibliography entries.
• Completion for LaTeX commands, environments, labels, citation keys, and project file paths.
• Live diagnostics for syntax, compile errors, undefined citations, duplicate keys, duplicate labels, and broken references.
• A local and global document outline with symbols, labels, citations, macros, and file relationships.
• Search and replace, code folding, multi-file tabs, Vim mode, word count, slash-command insertion, and configurable keyboard shortcuts.
• LaTeX structural helpers for \item, \begin / \end, environments, math delimiters, captions, and common insertion patterns.
• Hovers for compiled label numbers and pages, equation previews, and image thumbnails for \includegraphics targets.

The LaTeX editor keeps common structures one click away while leaving the source in your hands. Switch between Code and Visual view, undo or redo, choose a heading level, format text, insert references, and build a table or figure without memorising every command.

Build a structured LaTeX document from the toolbar, then keep editing the source directly.

The symbol picker contains 236 unique commands in its All view. The category lists contain 238 entries because \nabla and \partial are useful in both Operators and Calculus. Search by the symbol name or its LaTeX command, then insert it at the cursor.

Search 236 unique LaTeX commands by category or name and insert the one you need.

Source view is the canonical representation. When the engine supports it, turn on the visual editor for LaTeX or Markdown and edit prose, equations, citations, tables, and figures on a page-oriented surface. Math, footnotes, theorems, figures, tables and colours render as native, editable nodes; pasted rich text and images become LaTeX, and a floating toolbar edits tables in place. The source stays available for Git, external editors, and manual edits.

Use the visual view for page-level editing. Return to source when you need exact control over commands, packages, environments, or layout.

Hunspell handles spelling with the selected dictionary pack and personal or project additions. Harper checks grammar and style through a document-aware prose mask, so commands, comments, math bodies, and machine arguments are not treated as ordinary English sentences.

The academic profile avoids rules that fight scholarly writing, and every finding has a local action: replace it, ignore it for the project, ignore it for the session, or adjust the rule in Settings. Proofreading runs locally and does not require an AI provider.

Search across the project from the rail or command palette. The project index connects source files, headings, labels, citations, macros, and included files, so a large multi-file thesis is easier to navigate than a stack of editor tabs.

Oleafly keeps compilation close to the manuscript and turns compiler output into source-linked diagnostics. The engine is chosen per project, and the editor, preview, SyncTeX, preflight, and export controls follow the engine's actual capabilities.

LaTeX projects get a compatibility scan when they open. If a project needs more than the bundled engine can handle, Oleafly explains the gap and points you to the right engine or package. System TeX runs with restricted shell commands by default; you enable full shell escape separately for each project and computer.

The bundled Biber sidecar is matched to the Tectonic biblatex version. Compile logs distinguish a missing Biber executable, a version mismatch, and an ordinary LaTeX error so you can choose the right fix.

The PDF viewer is built into the workspace and can also open in a detached preview window. It keeps the last accepted PDF visible while a newer compile is running or has failed, so one broken edit does not erase the last readable result.

Use continuous scroll or a one-page / two-page spread. Zoom, fit to width, fit to height, rotate, invert colors, search the document text, follow the outline, jump to a page, download with a chosen filename, or inspect the compile log in the same surface. Encrypted PDFs get a password prompt rather than a blank viewer.

When valid SyncTeX data exists, forward navigation moves from source to PDF and inverse navigation moves from a PDF click back to the source line. Engines that do not support SyncTeX disable those controls.

Citation Search queries arXiv, Semantic Scholar, Crossref, PubMed, and OpenAlex in one place. It combines duplicate results, keeps the metadata visible, and lets you save a reference to the local literature library.

You can also look up a citation by DOI, arXiv ID, URL, or title. Import an existing library from Zotero RDF, EndNote XML, RIS, or BibTeX. The project index provides citation-key completion, reference navigation, hover details, and diagnostics for undefined citations, duplicate keys, duplicate DOIs, and incomplete bibliography metadata.

From document mode, Oleafly splits the current selection or manuscript into prose paragraphs, searches configured literature sources, removes papers already in the bibliography, and ranks the rest on a 0–100 scale. An AI provider can add short FOR / AGAINST reasoning. With AI off, the scan uses local heuristic ranking.

Save results to the local citation library, copy BibTeX, or append a selected entry to a project bibliography and insert its citation.

Review mode can use a configured AI provider to read the current document or a captured selection in two styles:

• Friendly: strengths first, then specific and constructive suggestions.
• Fire: a strict Reviewer #2 stress-test of claims, methods, and evidence.

The review is an optional assistant action. It is not a substitute for the venue's guidelines or a human coauthor.

Link a dataset, source library, analysis folder, or other research directory without moving it into the project. Oleafly reads linked folders and never writes to them. They stay out of compilation, project search, and Git, with clear missing and unreadable states when a path is unavailable.

The tools gallery includes Lab Search for research institutions listed by OpenAlex, with country filters and links to institutional, ROR, and OpenAlex records. Conference Deadlines provides searchable fields and countdowns for computer science venues from the bundled deadline data.

Draw a figure on a canvas with rectangles, circles, ellipses, diamonds, text, connectors, snapping, fill and border colors, undo, redo, a minimap, and a light or dark canvas. Switch to TikZ code, insert snippets, compile the figure in isolation, and preview it beside the source.

The saved .tikz source keeps the diagram model for another edit. Insert the result as TikZ or as a generated image, with a caption and label. Optional AI repair can help with figure compile errors, and a vision-capable model can inspect a render and refine its layout.

The LaTeX to Image tool renders an equation and exports PNG or SVG. It can also copy MathML for Word or KaTeX HTML. The Table to LaTeX tool provides a visual row-and-column editor and exports ordinary LaTeX. Image to LaTeX can transcribe an equation, table, or visible text from an image when a vision-capable provider is configured.

These tools are available from the gallery, the command palette, and slash commands where shown in the app.

Preflight reads the source, project structure, compiler log, and current PDF. It groups findings by problem and shows where each result came from. Checks can run together or separately, and a missing input is reported as unavailable or partial rather than counted as a pass.

Publication profiles cover general publication, arXiv, IEEE, ACM, other journals, and theses. You still need the venue's current author guide for its exact margins, page limits, file-size rules, and submission instructions.

The accessibility checks reference PDF/UA, Matterhorn, and WCAG and report the machine-checkable part of PDF/UA-1. Accessible export preparation can add LaTeX metadata, table-header declarations, and alt-text placeholders where the active class and packages support them.

Preflight is a set of machine checks, not a conformance certificate. It cannot judge whether alt text is meaningful, whether reading order makes sense, or whether contrast is sufficient. For a formal accessibility conformance statement, validate the final PDF with the venue's required tool.

Preflight makes machine-checkable accessibility findings visible before submission; it does not claim conformance by itself.

Oleafly works with a normal Git repository. The Source Control panel can initialize a repository, show unified or side-by-side diffs, stage files, discard changes, commit, push, pull, and show ahead or behind state for a remote. You can also publish a project to GitHub or connect an existing repository.

Saving, compiling, or closing a project never creates a commit. Oleafly does not hide the source from your terminal or edit the project's .gitignore just to make its own metadata disappear.

See staged changes, branches, history, and commits without leaving the project.

After a successful compile, Oleafly can save a local snapshot of the project. Checkpoints do not initialize a repository, create commits, or change a branch. Restore a previous state transactionally, label an important version, inspect stored files, trim old history, or move a complete history in an encrypted archive.

Use Git for intentional commits, branches, remotes, and collaboration. Use checkpoints for quick local recovery while a paper is changing fast.

The editor, compiler, PDF preview, citations, proofing, and preflight work with AI turned off. When enabled, AI uses the same project files and tools as the rest of the app.

With a configured provider, the assistant can:

• Read a project file or search the project before answering.
• Explain a section, equation, citation, or compile error.
• Revise prose, create files, rename files, and make targeted replacements.
• Compile the project, read the log, extract PDF text, and inspect rendered pages when the PDF capture setting is enabled.
• Search literature, verify a DOI, add a citation, and map the document's headings, labels, citations, macros, and file relationships.
• Draft, compile, inspect, repair, and insert editable TikZ or PGFPlots figures.

Every file change produces a visible diff. Settings can ask for approval on each action, approve ordinary writes for the session, or use a less interactive mode. Plan mode lets the assistant map the project before it can write, compile, or run commands.

Connect a hosted provider, an OpenAI-compatible endpoint, or a local Ollama model. Provider credentials live in encrypted app-managed storage and are not written into project files. The action you choose tells you when a hosted request will be made.

Choose a role for the task at hand, from research writing and document editing to critical review and figure work.

Start a task for a literature review, evidence audit, analysis, manuscript revision, or response to reviewers. It runs in a separate Git worktree or staged copy while you continue in the original project.

When the task finishes, inspect activity, outputs, and every changed file. Preview the diff, select the files worth keeping, and apply only those files. The original project stays unchanged until you apply reviewed results. If the project changed while the task was running, Oleafly detects the drift instead of applying an old diff over newer work.

The catalog includes 14 CLI agents. Each uses its own account, permissions, and model configuration; Oleafly supplies the project context and the surrounding workspace.

Agent	Command
Claude Code	claude
Codex CLI	codex
Gemini CLI	gemini
Pi	pi
OpenCode	opencode
OpenClaw	openclaw
Cline	cline
Hermes Agent	hermes
CodeBuddy	codebuddy
Kimi Code	kimi
Grok Build	grok
Cursor	agent
DeepSeek Harness	dsh
Qoder	qodercli

These marks identify compatible tools and remain the property of their respective owners. They do not imply endorsement.

Open a conversation, sign in through the agent's own CLI when required, reconnect, watch tool activity, steer a running turn, stop it, and keep the transcript with the project session where supported.

CLI agent support is in beta. Settings shows install readiness, platform limits, and resume support for each agent.

Oleafly includes skills for literature work, authoring, figures, review, submission, communication, and tooling. Skills are ordinary SKILL.md folders that follow the Agent Skills shape.

Use a skill with a slash command, add your own folder, record a repeatable workflow from a completed chat, or install a domain skill from the shelf when you choose to download one. Skills can be shared with compatible CLI agents on the same computer. A skill already installed keeps working offline.

The bundled research-core pack ships 36 skills. The names below are the IDs used by the catalog and in project settings.

Skills turn a useful research routine into something you can reuse and share with compatible agents.

Oleafly can run a local MCP server for an external client. It exposes the same project tools as the built-in assistant: list and read files, search the project, inspect its map, compile, read the log, extract PDF text, preview figures, and apply edits subject to Oleafly's approval policy.

The server binds to 127.0.0.1 only, uses a short-lived bearer token, and runs only while the Oleafly process is open. A read-only mode removes mutating tools from the tool list. The external client brings its own model, so you do not need to put an AI API key into Oleafly for this route.

Open Tools from the omnibar or command palette. Search by name, description, or slash command. A tool that needs a network connection or an AI provider says so in its own panel.

Search projects and documents, open settings, create a project, switch themes, or launch a tool from one place. Type / to narrow the list to commands and keep your hands on the keyboard while you work.

The equation workspace can also export PNG, SVG, MathML for Word, or KaTeX HTML. Table output remains ordinary LaTeX. Writing Generators prepare a prompt for the configured assistant; they do not provide a model by themselves.

The command palette also gives you recompile, auto-compile, SyncTeX, PDF export, clear build cache, word count, Git history, checkpoints, terminal, citation insertion, formatting helpers, environment helpers, theme controls, Vim mode, spellchecking, and offline mode.

Open shell tabs for the active project without leaving the workspace. Up to ten terminal sessions can be open per project. Rename and color tabs, close one or several sessions, and keep those tab labels with the project.

Use a tab to run a script, inspect a dataset, check a generated file, or use another CLI tool. It is your shell, with the same project directory available to the commands you choose to run.

Run project commands in a terminal tab without leaving the editor and PDF workspace.

The in-app browser is a separate OS window with tabs, an address bar, navigation controls, and isolated content webviews. It is mainly the computer-use surface: an agent can open a URL and wait for it to load while you keep the manuscript in the main window.

The computer-use tool cannot read, capture, click, or script page content. Remote pages do not receive Oleafly IPC access, and external navigation follows the active approval policy. Use the literature tools when you need searchable metadata or citations.

Free forever · Open source · No accounts · No sign-ups · No tracking

Platform	Package	Download
macOS · Apple Silicon	DMG
Windows · x86_64	MSI or EXE
Linux · x86_64	AppImage or DEB
Linux · ARM64	AppImage or DEB

The desktop app includes Tectonic for LaTeX and a Typst compiler. LaTeX can build offline when the required packages are already available to the bundled engine. Pandoc can be installed from Settings for Markdown conversions.

Linux packages require glibc 2.39 or newer. Releases include signed update artifacts, and the in-app updater checks the signature before installation. The release notes say what is included in each installer.

• Product guides
• Feature map
• Editor guide
• PDF preview
• Citations and literature
• Tools gallery
• Preflight and accessibility checks
• Templates
• Diagram Composer
• Git and source control
• Checkpoints
• AI Copilot
• Skills
• MCP integration
• Development setup

Oleafly is in beta. Live co-editing, comments, and background sync across devices are not available in this release. Typst and Markdown do not yet provide SyncTeX or the LaTeX-specific source preflight checks. Check the active engine in the app and follow the changelog for changes.

Join the Oleafly community on Discord to ask questions, get help with a stubborn build, show what you're writing, and vote on what gets built next. It's free and open to everyone. Prefer GitHub? Report a bug or request a feature in GitHub Issues.

Oleafly is built by Prajwal Murthy and contributors. Contributions to code, templates, documentation, and feedback are welcome. Read the contributing guide to take part.

If you use Oleafly, a GitHub star helps other researchers find it.

@software{oleafly,
  author  = {Venkateshmurthy, Prajwal S and {The Oleafly contributors}},
  title   = {Oleafly: a local-first desktop workspace for research writing},
  year    = {2026},
  version = {0.4.2},
  url     = {https://github.com/Oleafly/Oleafly},
  license = {AGPL-3.0-or-later}
}

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