overleaf-comments-export

⚠️ Unofficial tool. This is a third-party utility that talks to Overleaf's undocumented internal HTTP endpoints. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Overleaf. Endpoints may change without notice. Use at your own risk and in accordance with Overleaf's Terms of Service.

Export the comment threads and tracked changes from an Overleaf project into clean Markdown + structured JSON — designed so an AI assistant (Claude, ChatGPT, etc.) can ingest reviewer feedback and help you address it.

Why

Overleaf doesn't provide a way to export comments or tracked changes for use outside the editor. If you want to:

• have an AI agent draft point-by-point replies to reviewers,
• archive reviewer discussions outside of Overleaf,
• batch-address feedback across a large paper, or
• split feedback by reviewer to delegate work,

… you currently have to copy comments by hand. This tool automates that, given an Overleaf project URL and a logged-in browser session.

Install

pip install overleaf-comments-export

Requires Python 3.10+. Works on macOS, Linux, and Windows.

Quick start

CLI

overleaf-comments-export \
    --project-url https://www.overleaf.com/project/<24-hex-id> \
    --out ./paper-comments \
    --browser safari

The first time you run it, sign in to Overleaf in your browser of choice; the tool reads the session cookie from there.

GUI

overleaf-comments-export --gui

Opens a small Tkinter window with all options surfaced. Best for non-technical users.

What it produces

In your output folder, by default:

File	Purpose
comments-<date>.md	Human-readable Markdown grouped by file → section → line, with stable IDs (C001, C002, …) and source-context snippets around each anchor.
comments.json	Structured data — summary, top-level threads, files, comments, tracked_changes, etc. Schema described in agents.md.
comments.jsonl	One self-contained JSON record per comment for streaming/pipelines.
agents.md	A brief instruction file telling an AI agent how to consume the batch.
by-reviewer/<name>.md	(Optional, --per-reviewer) One Markdown per reviewer with only their threads.
comments.log	Diagnostic log for the run.

Filtering

# Only open comments
overleaf-comments-export --project-url … --out ./out --no-resolved

# Only one reviewer's threads
overleaf-comments-export --project-url … --out ./out --reviewer "Emma"

# Compact (default) vs. detailed (multi-line code-fence) layout
overleaf-comments-export --project-url … --out ./out --render-mode detailed

# Per-reviewer sub-reports under ./out/by-reviewer/
overleaf-comments-export --project-url … --out ./out --per-reviewer

Full flag reference: overleaf-comments-export --help.

Browser authentication

The tool reads the overleaf_session2 cookie from your browser. Trade-offs by browser on macOS:

Browser	Notes
Safari	Recommended. No Keychain prompt; macOS may ask once for permission to read ~/Library/Cookies/.
Firefox	No Keychain prompt; plain SQLite cookie store.
Chrome / Edge / Brave	Cookies are AES-encrypted with a Keychain-stored key; you'll get a Keychain password prompt every run. Hidden behind an opt-in in the GUI.

On Windows, Chrome 127+ uses App-Bound Encryption that browser-cookie3 doesn't fully decrypt yet — prefer Firefox or Edge on Windows.

On Linux, snap-packaged browsers sandbox their cookies — install browsers as native packages if you can.

Status & maintenance

This is a personal research utility published in case it's useful to others. It is provided as-is, with no guaranteed maintenance, no SLA, and no roadmap. Pull requests are welcome; issues may or may not be acted upon.

If Overleaf changes their internal API, this tool may stop working until someone (you?) adapts it.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.