MagicTeX — LaTeX Editor for AI Agents

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MagicTeX is a LaTeX editor built for AI agents — an Overleaf-like one-window workspace for Claude Code, served by an MCP server, with no local TeX install and no Overleaf account: live PDF preview, a source editor with a Visual (WYSIWYG) mode, change history, and comments you anchor on the rendered PDF that become edit instructions for the agent. (npm package: magictex-mcp.)

It compiles with a WASM TeX Live 2026 engine (texlyre-busytex) running inside a headless browser, so there's nothing multi-gigabyte to install — just a one-time WASM asset download.

See it before you install

A guided walkthrough of the comment → agent loop lives at zoelin.dev/tools/magictex, built from real tool output. It's a replay, not a hosted instance — the TeX engine is a one-time ~650 MB download and the agent half is Claude itself, so MagicTeX runs next to your project rather than in a web page.

The workspace

One browser window (inspired by Typst's one-surface editor and LiquidText's anchored annotations):

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  ✓ up to date · 13 pages        Export .zip · Download PDF   │
├────────────┬──────────────────────────────┬──────────────────┤
│ Source /   │          PDF (live)          │    Comments      │
│ History    │  select text → 💬 comment    │  accepted → ask  │
│  editor,   │  highlights stay anchored    │  Claude to       │
│  timeline  │  auto-reloads on every edit  │  address them    │
│  + diffs   │                              │  → resolved ✓    │
└────────────┴──────────────────────────────┴──────────────────┘

• Comment → Claude loop (the point of it all). Review the rendered document like a supervisor marking up a printout: select text, attach a comment ("tighten this paragraph"). Then tell Claude to "address my comments" — it pulls them via check_comments as located work items (page + quoted passage
  • the source file:line it anchors to + your ask), edits the source, and resolves each card with a note. You interact with the document; Claude interacts with the source. Run it hands-off with /loop — see docs/AGENT-LOOP.md.
• Editable source panel. A CodeMirror LaTeX editor with the project's files — save (Ctrl+S) recompiles and refreshes the PDF, Typst-style. Or keep using your own editor: any save triggers the same live loop.
• Live reload. A file watcher recompiles on every save — Claude's edits, the built-in editor's, or your external editor's.
• Change history. Each successful compile is auto-snapshotted to a hidden git ref (refs/latex-preview/checkpoints) — never touching your branches, git log, or working tree. The History tab shows the timeline and each checkpoint's colorized diff beside the PDF.
• Get to Overleaf. Download PDF, Export .zip (clean build-inputs bundle), and a one-click Open in Overleaf link for public GitHub repos; Premium Git-bridge sync is a documented git push. See docs/USER-GUIDE.md.
• Review workflow (reviewer → gate → resolver). A reviewer/defender agent posts comments via add_comment; you Accept/Reject them (or flip Auto-accept for copilot mode); an author loop resolves the accepted ones. Comments carry roles and a reply thread. See docs/AGENT-LOOP.md.
• Save vs. recompile, your call. The built-in editor auto-saves every 30s without recompiling; Ctrl+S / Save / Recompile rebuild the PDF on demand. (Flip ⚡ Live for recompile-as-you-type.) Your own editor and Claude's edits still auto-recompile via the watcher.
• Real projects. Auto-detects the main file, gathers multi-file \input/\include, .bib, in-repo .cls/.sty/.bst and figures, runs BibTeX and reruns when needed; common missing packages are auto-injected.
• Compile backend. Uses your local latexmk when you have one — full package fidelity, output matching Overleaf — and the bundled zero-install WASM TeX Live when you don't. Force either with backend: "system" / "wasm". Every compile reports which one ran.
• Document classes. IEEEtran is bundled, because no venue class ships in the WASM TeX Live and a missing class can't be worked around the way a package can. Conference classes (NeurIPS, ICML, CVPR, ACL, AAAI …) carry no redistributable licence, so put the .cls from the author kit beside your source — it's picked up automatically.
• MCP tools: render_preview (compile + open the workspace), check_comments / resolve_comment / add_comment / reply_to_comment (the review loop), show_diff (side-by-side diff as an image — useful on image-capable clients).
• Actionable errors. Failed compiles return parsed {file, line, message} errors so Claude can self-correct, and show in the workspace.

Setup

MagicTeX is on npm as magictex-mcp and listed in the official MCP registry as io.github.ZoeLinUTS/magictex — so any client that reads the registry can find it. There's nothing to clone and no TeX install; npx fetches it on first use.

1. Add it to your paper project's .mcp.json (see .mcp.json.example):

   config.json

   Copy

   {
     "mcpServers": {
       "magictex": { "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "magictex-mcp"] }
     }
   }
   

   For local development from a clone, point it at the source instead: "command": "npx", "args": ["tsx", "/absolute/path/to/magictex-mcp/src/server.ts"]

2. Restart Claude Code (or /mcp reconnect) so it picks up the server.

3. Ask Claude to render. e.g. "render a preview of this paper" → the first call downloads the WASM TeX Live assets (~650 MB, one time), compiles, and opens the live preview tab. Subsequent edits reload it automatically.

The WASM assets are not in this repo. They're fetched on first run into a per-user cache — ~/Library/Caches/magictex on macOS, $XDG_CACHE_HOME/magictex on Linux, %LOCALAPPDATA%\magictex on Windows — so upgrading MagicTeX doesn't re-download them, and a checkout, a global install and an npx run share one copy. Set MAGICTEX_ASSETS_DIR to put them elsewhere. To pre-fetch: npx texlyre-busytex download-assets <that directory>.

Install as a Claude Code plugin (slash commands)

For a low-typing workflow, install MagicTeX as a plugin — one install gives you the MCP server and the slash commands:

/plugin marketplace add ZoeLinUTS/MagicTeX-mcp
/plugin install magictex

Then, in your paper project, use the workflow commands for the common flows:

• /magic-latex — compile and open the workspace (the live preview).
• /ai-review [skill] — review the paper with a skill (default academic-paper-revision; pass any skill name) and post comments for you to Accept/Reject. Missing skills are reported with an install hint.
• /address-comments — resolve your accepted comments (loop it with /loop 60s /address-comments).
• ⚡ /ultra-agents [skill] [depth] — fully autonomous: review, auto-accept, fix, repeat, up to depth rounds (default 2), stopping early the moment a round finds nothing new. No per-round approval — that's the point, and the risk. depth > 5 asks you to confirm before starting. Ends with a summary (what was raised, what changed, which checkpoints to look at) — every round is still an ordinary, revertible checkpoint. See docs/AGENT-LOOP.md.

One command per tool

Every MCP tool also has a slash command with the same name, so you can drive any single step by typing the tool name. The rule to teach: the tool is X → type /X.