paperdebugger

PaperDebugger is an AI-powered academic writing assistant that helps researchers debug and improve their research papers with intelligent suggestions and seamless Overleaf integration, without leaving the editor. It is powered by our custom MCP-based orchestration engine that simulates the full academic workflow Research → Critique → Revision. This enables multi-step reasoning, reviewer-style critique, and structured revision passes beyond standard chat-based assistance.

Community

Our team is actively working to improve long-term reliability, hoping to iron out issues this month. Thank you for your patience. Stay connected with the PaperDebugger community! Join our Discord or WeChat channels for updates, announcements, and support.

Table of Contents

• Features
• Quick Start
  • For Users
  • Custom Endpoint Configuration
• Architecture Overview
• Self-Host Development Setup
• Contributing

Features

PaperDebugger never modifies your project, it only reads and provides suggestions.

• 🤖 AI-Powered Chat: Intelligent conversations about your Overleaf project
• ⚡ Instant Insert: One-click insertion of AI responses into your project
• 💬 Comment System: Automatically generate and insert comments into your project
• 📚 Prompt Library: Custom prompt templates for different use cases
• 🔒 Privacy First: Your content stays secure - we only read, never modify
• 🧠 Multi-Agent Orchestration – XtraMCP support for literature-grounded research, AI-Conference review, citation verification, and domain-specific revision

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/6c20924d-1eb6-44d5-95b0-207bd08b718b

Quick Start

For Users

1. Install the extension fron Chrome Web Store

2. Ready to use

   • Open any Overleaf project
   • Click the PaperDebugger icon on the top-left
   • Begin chatting with your LaTeX document!

Custom Endpoint Configuration

If you want to use a self-hosted PaperDebugger backend, you can configure a custom endpoint. Here are the steps:

1. Open the PaperDebugger extension

   (a.) Go to Settings, click the version number 5 times to enable "Developer Tools"

   (b.) Enter your backend URL in the "Backend Endpoint" field

2. Refresh the page

   Note: you can only use "Login by Overleaf" if you are self-hosting the backend.

If you encounter endpoint errors after refresh, use the "Advanced Options" at the bottom of the login page to reconfigure.

Architecture Overview

The PaperDebugger backend is built with modern technologies:

• Language: Go 1.24+
• Framework: Gin (HTTP) + gRPC (API)
• Database: MongoDB
• AI Integration: OpenAI API
• Architecture: Microservices with Protocol Buffers
• Authentication: JWT-based with OAuth support

Self-Host Development Setup

Please refer to DEVELOPMENT.md.

Contributing

Please refer to CONTRIBUTING.md for branch structure, merge workflow, PR guidelines, and code quality requirements.

Citation

@misc{hou2025paperdebugger,
      title={PaperDebugger: A Plugin-Based Multi-Agent System for In-Editor Academic Writing, Review, and Editing}, 
      author={Junyi Hou and Andre Lin Huikai and Nuo Chen and Yiwei Gong and Bingsheng He},
      year={2025},
      eprint={2512.02589},
      archivePrefix={arXiv},
      primaryClass={cs.AI},
      url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.02589}, 
}