PaperDebugger: A Plugin-Based Multi-Agent System for In-Editor Academic Writing, Review, and Editing

TL;DR

PaperDebugger introduces an in-editor, multi-agent system for academic writing that enables deep, context-aware interactions within LaTeX editors like Overleaf, integrating reasoning, revision, and literature tools seamlessly.

Contribution

It presents a novel plugin-based multi-agent architecture for in-editor academic writing, addressing synchronization, security, and extensibility challenges.

Findings

Successful integration of LLM reasoning within LaTeX editors

Active user engagement demonstrated through analytics

Validated practicality of in-editor, agentic writing assistant

Abstract

Large language models are increasingly embedded into academic writing workflows, yet existing assistants remain external to the editor, preventing deep interaction with document state, structure, and revision history. This separation makes it impossible to support agentic, context-aware operations directly within LaTeX editors such as Overleaf. We present PaperDebugger, an in-editor, multi-agent, and plugin-based academic writing assistant that brings LLM-driven reasoning directly into the writing environment. Enabling such in-editor interaction is technically non-trivial: it requires reliable bidirectional synchronization with the editor, fine-grained version control and patching, secure state management, multi-agent scheduling, and extensible communication with external tools. PaperDebugger addresses these challenges through a Chrome-approved extension, a Kubernetes-native orchestration layer, and a Model Context Protocol (MCP) toolchain that integrates literature search, reference lookup, document scoring, and revision pipelines. Our demo showcases a fully integrated workflow, including localized edits, structured reviews, parallel agent execution, and diff-based updates, encapsulated within a minimal-intrusion user interface (UI). Early aggregated analytics demonstrate active user engagement and validate the practicality of an editor-native, agentic writing assistant. More details about this demo and video could be found at https://github.com/PaperDebugger/PaperDebugger.