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Paper Espresso is currently an early, Codex-first skills-only plugin. The canonical workflow is skills/paper-espresso/SKILL.md.

Start a processing pass

A paper title, arXiv ID, arXiv URL, or local PDF is the only input required to start. Choose exactly one of the following alternative launch lanes. They start the same workflow; do not run both.

Installed plugin

Use this lane for normal operation:

$paper-espresso PAPER

Repository checkout

Use this lane only while developing from the repository before installing the plugin:

Read and follow skills/paper-espresso/SKILL.md for PAPER.

In either prompt, replace PAPER with a paper title, arXiv ID, arXiv URL, or local PDF path.

With no other instructions, Paper Espresso uses these defaults:

  • at most one US Letter page (request A4, another size, or an exact count when needed);
  • emphasis inferred from the paper;
  • a technically literate reader outside the paper's immediate subfield;
  • editable digest.tex and a compiled, layout-checked digest.pdf.

Everything after PAPER is optional and overrides a default. For example:

$paper-espresso PAPER — two A4 pages; emphasize the proof strategy.

If a title matches multiple papers, Paper Espresso asks for clarification before continuing.

Requirements

  • Python 3.10+
  • uv
  • Poppler: pdftotext, pdfinfo, and pdftoppm
  • Tectonic, pdflatex, lualatex, or xelatex

The runtime itself uses Python's standard library.

For local marketplace installation during development, consult the official Codex plugin guidance.

Expected output

  • digest.tex: editable LaTeX with no dependency on temporary downloads
  • digest.pdf: compiled and layout-checked within the requested maximum page count

Downloaded source and intermediate files live in a marked temporary workspace and are deleted after completion.

Build this documentation

uv sync --extra docs
uv run --extra docs zensical serve

For a production build:

uv run --extra docs zensical build --clean

The generated site is written to site/.

Publish with GitHub Pages

The included workflow deploys the documentation after relevant pushes to main. In the GitHub repository, configure Settings → Pages → Build and deployment → Source to GitHub Actions once. The workflow then builds and deploys the site automatically.