Overleaf MCP

Read and edit Overleaf projects from Claude, using the Overleaf git bridge.

WARNING: When your provide the MCP with a project ID, This gives Claude access to the ENTIRE project directory.

Requirements

• Overleaf premium (check your institution's access!)
• uv, git, TeX distribution, and pdftocairo (you could brew install poppler on Macs)

Setup

1. Clone this repo.

2. Create ~/.overleaf-mcp/projects.json. An example is in projects.json.example.

   { "default": "paper", "projects": { "paper": "<project-id>" } }
   

3. Add the server to your Claude config. You can generate the git token in Overleaf Account Settings.

   {
     "mcpServers": {
       "overleaf": {
         "command": "/absolute/path/to/uv",
         "args": ["run", "--directory", "/absolute/path/to/overleaf-mcp", "overleaf-mcp"],
         "env": { "OVERLEAF_TOKEN": "your_git_token" }
       }
     }
   }
   

4. Restart your Claude Desktop.

How it works

A project is unverified until open_project succeeds, which checks that every \usepackage resolves against your local TeX environment, and baseline-compiles each root.

All writes are refused until open_project passes

A .tex containing \documentclass is a root, while children are included with by \input/\include/\subfile. Editing a child re-compiles the roots that include it. For instance, this covers a standard main.tex + sections/ project, a single-file paper, or even a folder of standalone one-page documents with the same rule. Further, any errors block a push while warnings are only reported.

Tools

tool	description
open_project	pull, verify environment, and baseline-compile
files	list .tex, marking roots
outline	structure with line numbers
read	line-numbered, optionally a range (lines="150-190")
grep	regex search, file:line: match
edit	replace an exact unique snippet, compile-gated
write	create or overwrite a whole file
write_section	create or overwrite one section, using the exact title
add_asset	copy an image or binary
compile	compile the owning root, return a digest
render	one page as an image - very useful for layout/images