What Is Oleafly? The Beginner's Guide to the Desktop Editor for LaTeX, Typst and Markdown Papers

CodexFuse Team · 2026-11-05T16:14:12.997Z · 23 min read min read

What Is Oleafly? The Beginner's Guide to the Desktop Editor for LaTeX, Typst and Markdown Papers

What Is Oleafly?

Oleafly is a free, open-source desktop editor for writing research papers in LaTeX, Typst and Markdown, with the source, the PDF, citations, figures and Git history in one place. It is an Oleafly editor built by Prajwal Murthy and contributors, and it runs on macOS, Windows and Linux with no account, no telemetry and no subscription. The project is young: its GitHub repository was created on July 5, 2026, which is 123 days before this article, and it had 1,052 stars, 63 forks and 1,297 commits when checked on November 5, 2026.

Spell the name carefully, because Oleafly is one letter away from Overleaf, and the two are not the same product. Overleaf is a browser-based LaTeX editor from Digital Science that compiles your paper on its servers. Oleafly is a separate desktop app, licensed under AGPL-3.0, that keeps your project in ordinary files on your own machine and compiles it there.

Keep that split in mind for the rest of this guide, because several facts below belong to one of them and not the other.

The local-first model is easy to test in your head. A SHA-256 hash generator proves a file's contents without sending the file anywhere, and Oleafly applies the same idea to a whole paper: your project stays in files you own.

If you already run code on remote machines, VPS hosting is the usual way to keep that work separate from your laptop. Oleafly does the same job for a paper on your own machine, with a local folder instead of a server.

This is a same-day explainer built only from primary sources. At the time of writing, no independent hands-on review, how-to, or standalone explainer about Oleafly exists anywhere else. Everything below comes from the Oleafly homepage and documentation, the GitHub repository, the official MCP registry, the Agent Client Protocol clients list, and directory listings, all fetched on November 5, 2026.

StillWorks picked Oleafly as pick number 15 in its November 5, 2026 list, describing it exactly as "Edits LaTeX, Typst or Markdown papers with live co-author comments, AI help optional."

What Can You Write in Oleafly?

You can write a paper in any of three formats, and Oleafly treats each one as a first-class citizen rather than a conversion afterthought. LaTeX is the classic route for math-heavy papers, Typst is the newer, faster alternative, and Markdown is the light route for notes, reports and early drafts. The outline, the structure map and the live preview work the same way in all three.

Markdown gets a dedicated formatting toolbar and a Pandoc build path, with three editing modes. Code edits the Markdown directly, Visual gives formatted editing for headings, paragraphs, lists, links, images and tables, and Both shows the source and the formatted text together. You can compile a Markdown project to PDF, or export it to Word, HTML, Typst, LaTeX, PowerPoint, EPUB or plain text, and exports to LaTeX and Typst keep the bibliography.

The compilers ship with the app, so a new project compiles without installing anything. Oleafly LaTeX projects compile with the bundled Tectonic engine or your own TeX install, Typst has its own bundled compiler, and Markdown goes through Pandoc. When a project needs a full TeX distribution, you can switch it to latexmk with TeX Live, MacTeX, MiKTeX, or a TinyTeX that Oleafly installs for you.

How Does the Live PDF Preview Work?

The live PDF preview is the part of Oleafly you will look at most, and it is built for drafts rather than for finished pages. The viewer has zoom, two-page spreads, a dark reading mode and search in its toolbar. Click a word in the PDF to jump to its line in the editor, and click in the editor to jump back to the PDF.

Two-way sync uses SyncTeX for LaTeX and Tinymist for Typst 0.13 or newer. That matters because a broken build is a normal part of writing a paper, and Oleafly handles it calmly: if a build fails, the last good PDF stays up while you fix the error. You keep reading your draft instead of staring at a blank pane.

The preview is also where checkpoints quietly do their work. Oleafly saves a local snapshot after each successful compile, so you can roll back without making a commit. The snapshot habit is the reason the preview feels safe to experiment in: a bad edit costs one restore, not one afternoon.

How Do Citations and Figures Work?

Citations in Oleafly start from search, not from a file you already have. You can search arXiv, Semantic Scholar, Crossref, PubMed and OpenAlex at once and cite a result straight from the list, which is five databases in one search box. Citations, labels and bib entries live in one panel, and undefined and duplicate keys get flagged as you type.

Zotero users get a faster path: type @ and part of an author, title or year to cite from your Zotero library as you type. In Markdown, the same idea uses a references.bib file declared in the YAML metadata, and a citation key written as [@citation-key] becomes a formatted citation and a reference list when Pandoc builds the document.

Figures get their own composer instead of a code-only workflow. You put boxes and arrows on a canvas, then switch to the TikZ source and keep editing, which means a diagram starts visually and ends as code you can version. The composer writes TikZ for LaTeX, fletcher for Typst, or Mermaid for Markdown, and a Mermaid diagram is saved as a rendered PNG at figures/mermaid-<hash>.png so it appears in the compiled PDF.

What Does Git Do in Oleafly?

Every Oleafly project is an ordinary folder with an ordinary Git repository, and that is the whole point. You can stage, diff, commit, push, pull and publish to GitHub, GitLab, Gitea, Forgejo, Codeberg or your own server from the Source Control panel, using the same Git you already know. Nothing about the project is locked inside a proprietary format.

Checkpoints sit underneath Git as a lighter safety net. A checkpoint saves a local snapshot after each successful compile, so you can roll back without making a commit. That split is worth keeping straight: checkpoints are automatic and local, commits are deliberate and shared, and both protect the same files.

The Git model also explains how Oleafly imports work. You can sign in to Overleaf from Oleafly, import your projects and keep them in sync, and a .zip, a Word file, an arXiv paper or a GitHub repo works too. One limit sits on Overleaf's side rather than Oleafly's: the README says two-way Overleaf sync needs a paid or university plan on the project owner's Overleaf account.

How Does Real-Time Co-Authoring Work?

Real-time co-authoring in Oleafly looks like the browser tools you already know, with one structural difference. You share a project with your co-authors and see their cursors move as they type, each one labelled with a name. Comments sit next to the line they are about, with threads, replies, @mentions and a resolve button.

Each shared project has roles, a chat and a version history. The roles are owner, editors, reviewers, commenters and viewers, and a reviewer's edits become suggestions rather than direct changes. The history lets you compare versions, restore one, or give a version a name, so a co-author's rewrite is never a mystery.

The structural difference is where the server lives. Co-authoring runs on Oleafly Server, which your lab installs on a machine it controls with one command, not on a hosted Oleafly cloud. The server is a single Rust binary that uses SQLite, keeps files on disk or in any S3-compatible store, and sends email over SMTP if you set it up.

If your connection drops mid-train-ride, you keep writing, and your edits go through when you reconnect.

A lab that wants its own server usually puts it on a machine it controls, and cloud hosting is the usual way to rent one. For backups rather than collaboration, Oleafly also syncs to Dropbox, Google Drive or any S3 storage, so every project gets a copy in a place you own.

How Do the ACP Agents Work Inside Oleafly?

Oleafly runs coding agents next to the source, the PDF and the Git history, and that sentence is worth unpacking. The agents connect over ACP, the Agent Client Protocol, which is the protocol an editor uses to drive a coding agent. Fourteen agents run inside the editor, plus any other ACP agent, and their edits come to you for review like any other change.

The named agents are Claude Code, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI, Pi, OpenCode, OpenClaw, Cline, Hermes Agent, CodeBuddy, Kimi Code, Grok Build, Cursor, DeepSeek Harness and Qoder. The Agent Client Protocol clients page lists Oleafly under editors and IDEs with exactly this description: a LaTeX, Typst and Markdown editor for research writing, built with Tauri, Rust and React, that runs Claude Code, Codex and other ACP agents next to the source, the PDF and Git history. These Oleafly ACP agents all connect the same way, and their edits arrive as diffs you review.

Inside the editor, the built-in assistant can read your project, run a compile, fix the error it finds, or draft a TikZ figure. Each edit shows up as a diff you can review and undo, which is the same review habit the ACP agents follow. If you want to run Claude Code yourself first, our guide on how to use Claude Code covers the agent on its own before you bring it into an editor.

AI in Oleafly is optional and bring-your-own-key. You bring a hosted model or your own endpoint, or you run Ollama and keep it all on your machine. The homepage says the assistant receives only the context you choose to send, so do not expect free unlimited AI bundled with the download: the free part is the editor, and the model is yours to supply.

What Is the Oleafly MCP Server?

The Oleafly MCP server is the other direction of the same AI story, and keeping the two directions apart matters. ACP is how Oleafly drives coding agents inside the editor. MCP, the Model Context Protocol, is how outside AI clients drive Oleafly's project tools: they can read, edit, search and compile the project open in Oleafly.

The official MCP registry lists exactly one Oleafly server, named io.github.Oleafly/oleafly, with the description "Read, edit, search and compile the LaTeX, Typst or Markdown project open in Oleafly." The registry record shows version 0.4.8, status active, and a publication date of October 26, 2026, which is 10 days before this article. Each release carries an oleafly.mcpb bundle that installs the extension in Claude Desktop when you open it.

The server listens on 127.0.0.1 only, on preferred port 5323, behind a bearer token, so it is a local service rather than a public one. The oleafly mcp command gives Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and Gemini CLI the project tools over stdio, with the app open or closed. MCP itself is a young protocol family with several transports, and the background piece on MCP over MoQ explains one of them if you want the wider picture.

How Do You Install Oleafly and Write Your First Paper?

Installing Oleafly takes minutes, because the compilers come with it. Grab a prebuilt installer from the latest GitHub release, or build from source, and pick the package for your machine: a DMG for macOS on Apple Silicon or Intel, an MSI or EXE for Windows on x86_64, or an AppImage, DEB or RPM for Linux on x86_64 or ARM64. Linux packages need glibc 2.35 or newer, which means Ubuntu 22.04, Debian 12 or later.

Some builds may trigger an operating-system warning on first launch, and the install guide explains what to check and how to continue.

The five steps below are the whole first run. They assume a LaTeX paper, but the Typst and Markdown paths differ only at step two, where you pick the other format and its template.

1. Download the installer for your platform from the latest GitHub release and open Oleafly. No account is needed, and there is no subscription screen.
2. Create a project, pick LaTeX, Typst or Markdown, and start from one of the template packs. The homepage lists 1,800+ templates in 24 packs, which averages 75 templates per pack, and every template compiles offline once it is on your machine.
3. Write in the editor and watch the live PDF preview update beside it. Click a word in the PDF to jump to its line in the source.
4. Add your references with the citation search across arXiv, Semantic Scholar, Crossref, PubMed and OpenAlex, or cite from Zotero by typing @ and part of an author, title or year.
5. Compile, let Oleafly save its checkpoint, then commit and push from the Source Control panel. Run the six preflight checks before you submit: compile, submission, ATS, accessibility, references and privacy.

Power users get a command line too. The oleaflyc CLI covers the same loop from a terminal: oleaflyc build --watch, oleaflyc check --json, oleaflyc agent run "Make it compile", oleaflyc mcp, oleaflyc import overleaf, oleaflyc convert main.tex --to docx, and oleaflyc checkpoint restore v12. The CLI agents stopped being marked beta in version 0.4.9, which is one of the few parts of the app that has already shed its beta label.

Oleafly vs Overleaf: Which One Fits Your Paper?

Overleaf is the editor most researchers already know, so the honest comparison starts there. Overleaf is an online LaTeX editor that runs in your browser: you write LaTeX source on one side of the screen, Overleaf compiles it on its servers, and the finished PDF appears on the other side, with nothing to install. Oleafly is the desktop, local-first answer to the same job, and it adds Typst and Markdown beside LaTeX.

Price is the sharpest difference. Oleafly is free with no subscription, and its vendor promise is "free forever, open source, no Oleafly account, no tracking". Overleaf's free plan costs $0 but allows only 1 collaborator per project, a Basic compile timeout, and document history reaching back only 24 hours.

Overleaf Standard costs $16.75 a month when billed annually, or $25 month to month, which is $199 a year, and it allows 10 collaborators with a compile timeout 24 times the Basic one. Overleaf Pro costs $33.25 a month billed annually, or $45 month to month, which is $399 a year, with unlimited collaborators. The student plan is $8.25 a month billed annually, or $13 month to month, which is $98 a year.

Track changes, full document history, and Git, GitHub, Dropbox and Zotero integrations are paid-plan features on Overleaf. A researcher moving from Overleaf Standard to Oleafly saves $199 a year on subscription fees alone, before counting the student or Pro tiers.

The compile limit deserves its own sentence, because the numbers come from different places. Overleaf's own plans page says only "Basic" for free and "24x Basic" for paid plans. The LetX comparison, which says it read Overleaf's plans page on November 2, 2026, translates that to 10 seconds free and 240 seconds on every paid plan.

Use whichever figure you quote with its source attached, and do not present the seconds as Overleaf's own words.

Two honest caveats belong in this section. First, Oleafly's own comparison table is the source for the "LaTeX only" and "unlimited co-authors" cells, so treat those as the vendor's framing, not independent measurement. Second, Overleaf's hosted service has years of uptime and a template library researchers already trust, while Oleafly's repository is about four months old and its README still labels the app beta.

Price and local control favour Oleafly; track record favours Overleaf.

What Is Typst, and Why Does Oleafly Support It?

Typst is an open-source typesetting system and markup language designed as an alternative to LaTeX, and Oleafly supports it because a growing share of new papers is written in it. The Typst compiler is free software under the Apache License 2.0, and it produces results comparable to LaTeX with a simpler markup system, easier customisation, and faster compiles. Oleafly Typst support bundles that compiler, so the fast preview works with no separate install.

The project has been developed since 2019 and was first published in 2022 by Laurenz Mädje and Martin Haug for their master's theses at Technische Universität Berlin. The compiler is developed by Typst GmbH, which was incorporated in 2023 in Berlin and also runs a proprietary collaborative web editor. That web editor is a separate product from Oleafly: Oleafly is not affiliated with Typst GmbH, it simply bundles the open-source Typst compiler the way it bundles Tectonic and Pandoc.

For a writer, the practical difference is iteration speed. Typst compiles fast enough that the live preview feels instant, and its markup reads more like Markdown than like LaTeX macros. Oleafly adds two-way source and PDF sync for Typst through Tinymist on Typst 0.13 or newer, so the fast compile and the click-to-jump preview reinforce each other.

If your field still demands LaTeX templates, stay with LaTeX; if you are starting a new paper and your venue accepts Typst, it is the lower-friction choice inside Oleafly.

Who Should Use Oleafly — and Who Should Not?

Oleafly fits researchers and graduate students who write in LaTeX, Typst or Markdown, want their files on their own machine, and like Git. It fits labs that can run one small server for co-authoring, and it fits writers who already pay for Claude Code or Codex and want that agent working inside the editor rather than in a separate terminal. The free price removes the usual trial friction: there is no plan to pick and no card to enter.

The limits are real and the vendor states most of them itself. The README heading is literally "Oleafly beta", the Tools gallery is beta and off by default, and Research Tasks are experimental and off by default. The repository is about four months old, with 41 releases in 123 days, which is one release every 3.0 days, and 1,297 commits across those releases, or about 31.6 commits per release.

That pace is a sign of active development and a sign of a young project at the same time. No independent hands-on review exists yet: the PurpleLink Mac LaTeX editors guide, updated October 15, 2026, lists Oleafly in a comparison row and states plainly that its author did not install or test it.

The star count tells the same young-and-rising story if you read it with its date attached. The repository had 1,052 stars on November 5, 2026, and two trackers disagree on the recent growth: ExtOps recorded +600 stars in 7 days from a base of 447 in passes up to November 5, 2026, while Upstar recorded +534 stars after spotting the project at 364. ExtOps's arithmetic lands at 447 + 600 = 1,047, which is 5 stars short of the live count of 1,052 seen the same day.

Either tracker on its own is a rising signal; neither should be quoted as a settled fact without its name attached.

Sources

Oleafly homepage, oleafly.com — product description, pricing, platforms, comparison table, feature claims, fetched November 5, 2026.

Oleafly documentation, oleafly.com/docs/ and oleafly.com/docs/writing/markdown/ — Markdown modes, compilers, citations, co-authoring, fetched November 5, 2026.

Oleafly MCP documentation, oleafly.com/docs/mcp/ — MCP server behaviour, local listener, bearer token, fetched November 5, 2026.

Oleafly GitHub repository, github.com/Oleafly/Oleafly — 1,052 stars, 63 forks, 1,297 commits, 41 releases, created July 5, 2026, README beta label, platform table, fetched November 5, 2026.

Oleafly releases, github.com/Oleafly/Oleafly/releases — latest release v0.4.10 with Intel Mac build, CLI agents no longer beta in v0.4.9, fetched November 5, 2026.

Official MCP registry, registry.modelcontextprotocol.io — server io.github.Oleafly/oleafly, version 0.4.8, published October 26, 2026, fetched November 5, 2026.

Agent Client Protocol clients list, agentclientprotocol.com/get-started/clients — Oleafly entry wording, fetched November 5, 2026.

StillWorks, stillworks.dev — pick number 15, November 5, 2026, exact wording quoted in this article, fetched November 5, 2026.

Overleaf plans page, overleaf.com/user/subscription/plans — Free, Standard, Pro and Student prices and limits, fetched November 5, 2026.

LetX Overleaf pricing comparison, letx.app/compare/overleaf-pricing/ — 10-second free and 240-second paid compile figures, checked November 2, 2026, fetched November 5, 2026.

Typst background, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typst and typst.app/about — history, licence, Typst GmbH, fetched November 5, 2026.

ExtOps trending plugins, extops.dev/plugins/trending — +600 stars in 7 days from 447, passes up to November 5, 2026, fetched November 5, 2026.

Upstar trending local-first, upstar.dev — +534 stars, spotted at 364, fetched November 5, 2026.

PurpleLink Mac LaTeX editors guide, purplelink.llc/guides/best-mac-latex-editors/ — Oleafly comparison row, author did not install or test, updated October 15, 2026, fetched November 5, 2026.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Oleafly really free?

Yes, with the vendor's own words attached. Oleafly's homepage says "Free. Open source.

Yours." and "No account, no telemetry", and the app is licensed under AGPL-3.0 with no subscription. The free part is the editor itself: AI features need your own key, endpoint, or a local Ollama model, and real-time co-authoring needs a server your lab runs. There is no paid Oleafly plan to upgrade to, which is the point of the "free forever" promise on its homepage.

Is Oleafly the same as Overleaf?

No. Oleafly, spelled O-l-e-a-f-l-y, is a separate desktop app from a different maker, and Overleaf is a browser-based LaTeX editor from Digital Science. The names differ by a few letters, they share the "-leaf" ending, and they serve the same niche, which is why search results for one are full of the other.

Oleafly runs on your machine with LaTeX, Typst and Markdown; Overleaf runs in your browser with LaTeX only. Oleafly can import Overleaf projects, but the two products are independent.

Can Oleafly replace my TeX installation?

For most papers, yes. Tectonic, Typst and Pandoc ship with the app, so a new project compiles without installing anything, and the live PDF preview works straight away. If a project needs a full TeX distribution, you can switch it to latexmk with TeX Live, MacTeX, MiKTeX, or a TinyTeX that Oleafly installs for you.

The bundled compilers cover the common case; the full distribution covers the demanding one.

Do I need an account or Oleafly's cloud to co-author a paper?

No account, and there is no Oleafly cloud to join. Co-authoring runs on Oleafly Server, which your lab installs on a machine it controls with one command, and the server is a single Rust binary using SQLite. Your co-authors get named cursors, line comments, roles and a shared history on that server.

If your connection drops, you keep writing, and your edits go through when you reconnect.

Which AI agents work inside Oleafly?

Fourteen agents run inside the editor over ACP: Claude Code, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI, Pi, OpenCode, OpenClaw, Cline, Hermes Agent, CodeBuddy, Kimi Code, Grok Build, Cursor, DeepSeek Harness and Qoder, plus any other ACP agent. Their edits arrive as diffs you review and undo, the same way the built-in assistant's edits do. Separately, the Oleafly MCP server lets outside AI clients such as Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor and Codex read, edit, search and compile the project open in Oleafly.