Cursor for researchers. Open-source. Agent-powered. Built on Overleaf.

ResearchKit is an AI agent layer built on top of Overleaf Community Edition. It gives researchers the same kind of AI-augmented workflow that software engineers get with Cursor — inline editing, paper-aware context, and specialized agents — while keeping the Overleaf IDE they already know.

• Docker and Docker Compose
• An LLM API key (OpenAI, Anthropic, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint)

cp .env.example .env

Edit .env:

RESEARCHKIT_PORT=3020

# Option A: OpenAI
OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...

# Option B: OpenAI-compatible proxy (LiteLLM, vLLM, Ollama, etc.)
OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...
OPENAI_BASE_URL=http://your-proxy:4000

# Option C: Anthropic
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...

docker compose up -d --build

The first build takes a few minutes — it extends the official Overleaf image with the ResearchKit module and rebuilds the frontend bundle.

This starts:

docker exec sharelatex /bin/bash -c "cd /overleaf/services/web && node modules/server-ce-scripts/scripts/create-user --admin --email=admin@example.com"

1. Open http://localhost in your browser
2. Log in and open a LaTeX project
3. Click the ResearchKit icon (robot) in the sidebar rail
4. Start chatting: "Paraphrase this paragraph", "Draft an introduction", etc.

docker compose up --build

Best for developing the agent/memory/provider code.

# Terminal 1: Start Overleaf + databases
docker compose up sharelatex mongo redis

# Terminal 2: Run ResearchKit with hot reload
cd services/researchkit
python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e ".[dev]"

export MONGODB_URL="mongodb://localhost:27017/sharelatex"
export OPENAI_API_KEY="sk-..."
uvicorn researchkit.main:app --reload --host 0.0.0.0 --port 3020

For working on the Overleaf sidebar UI:

# From repo root — follow standard Overleaf dev setup
cd develop && bin/build && bin/dev

The ResearchKit module lives at services/web/modules/researchkit/. Restart webpack after changing settings.defaults.js.

┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  Overleaf (port 80)                     │
│  ├── React sidebar panel (thin UI)      │
│  └── Express proxy → injects project    │
│       files and forwards to Python      │
└──────────────┬──────────────────────────┘
               │
┌──────────────▼──────────────────────────┐
│  ResearchKit Service (port 3020)        │
│  ├── Main Agent (inline editing)        │
│  ├── Memory (paper context)             │
│  ├── LLM Providers (OpenAI/Claude/...)  │
│  ├── Research Agent (stub)              │
│  ├── Figure Agent (stub)                │
│  └── Review Agent (stub)                │
└──────────────┬──────────────────────────┘
               │
          MongoDB (shared)

services/
├── researchkit/              # Python AI service (FastAPI)
│   └── researchkit/
│       ├── agents/           # Main Agent + sub-agent stubs
│       ├── memory/           # Paper context (LaTeX parser, Memory)
│       ├── providers/        # LLM abstraction (OpenAI, Claude, custom)
│       ├── api/              # REST endpoints
│       └── config/           # Configuration management
└── web/
    └── modules/researchkit/  # Overleaf frontend module
        ├── app/src/          # Express proxy routes
        └── frontend/         # React sidebar components

• Sidebar chat panel in the Overleaf editor
• Streaming responses via SSE
• Main Agent with inline editing (paraphrase, grammar, section drafting, BibTeX)
• Paper Memory system (auto-indexes LaTeX project structure, citations, abstract)
• Multi-provider LLM support (OpenAI, Anthropic, any OpenAI-compatible endpoint)
• Per-project configuration

• Research Agent — literature search, full-paper reading, citation graph traversal, related work generation
• Figure Agent — data-to-plots via Python execution, TikZ generation, diagram creation
• Review Agent — simulated peer review, claim strength analysis, venue checklist validation

See ResearchKit-PRD.md for the full product specification.

cd services/researchkit
pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest
ruff check researchkit/

This project is built on top of Overleaf Community Edition. See the original CONTRIBUTING.md for Overleaf contribution guidelines.

The code in this repository is released under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE, version 3. A copy can be found in the LICENSE file.