Make your paper part of your codebase: Integrating Claude Code/Github Copilot with Overleaf for writing papers [P]

Since a lot of the members here are researchers, I thought I'll share my setup that has significantly acclerated my writing process.

Much of the process of writing a paper is describing what your code does, so writing it should not be very different than writing code. It makes sense to integrate your paper into the codebase.

CoPilot integration with Overleaf for writing paper in VSCode:

1. Create local copy
   1. In an existing Overleaf project, click on the Integrations button on the left panel. Then click on git integrations
   2. Clone using the generated repo link to one of the servers (using the token)
2. CoPilot
   1. It is better to keep the cloned repo in your codebase folder (maybe in a sub-folder named paper)
   2. Download the Latex Workshop extension for VSCode
      1. You need to install some packages as well -
      2. sudo apt-get install -y texlive-full latexmk biber
   3. Open the main.tex in VSCode, and compiled PDF in a split panel (to get similar setup as Overleaf)
   4. Now you can ask CoPilot to edit the paper.
3. Multiple collaborators*
   1. Easiest way is to let your paper folder be accessible to your collaborators so all of you can edit the same file. Every once a while you can push to Overleaf using git
   2. The other way is to use all git functionality (commit, push, pull, merge) to collaborate as the paper folder is git repository
   3. Any edit made on the Overleaf web page should be pulled into the local repo

*There's also a VSCode LiveShare extension which allows Word-style collaborative editing. I haven't explored that