OverleafCopilot: Empowering Academic Writing in Overleaf with Large Language Models

TL;DR

OverleafCopilot is a browser extension that integrates Large Language Models with Overleaf to improve academic writing efficiency, quality, and user experience while addressing privacy and communication challenges.

Contribution

This work introduces OverleafCopilot, the first seamless LLM integration with Overleaf, along with PromptGenius and an agent command system to enhance research paper writing.

Findings

Over 1000 researchers use OverleafCopilot.

PromptGenius facilitates prompt sharing and discovery.

The tool significantly reduces writing time.

Abstract

The rapid development of Large Language Models (LLMs) has facilitated a variety of applications from different domains. In this technical report, we explore the integration of LLMs and the popular academic writing tool, Overleaf, to enhance the efficiency and quality of academic writing. To achieve the above goal, there are three challenges: i) including seamless interaction between Overleaf and LLMs, ii) establishing reliable communication with the LLM provider, and iii) ensuring user privacy. To address these challenges, we present OverleafCopilot, the first-ever tool (i.e., a browser extension) that seamlessly integrates LLMs and Overleaf, enabling researchers to leverage the power of LLMs while writing papers. Specifically, we first propose an effective framework to bridge LLMs and Overleaf. Then, we developed PromptGenius, a website for researchers to easily find and share high-quality up-to-date prompts. Thirdly, we propose an agent command system to help researchers quickly build their customizable agents. OverleafCopilot (https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/overleaf-copilot/eoadabdpninlhkkbhngoddfjianhlghb ) has been on the Chrome Extension Store, which now serves thousands of researchers. Additionally, the code of PromptGenius is released at https://github.com/wenhaomin/ChatGPT-PromptGenius. We believe our work has the potential to revolutionize academic writing practices, empowering researchers to produce higher-quality papers in less time.