nantex

LaTeX-to-PDF live preview in your browser — no local LaTeX install needed.

Write .tex, save, see the result. That's it.

Website: nantex.nandish.online

How it works

nantex watches your .tex file, compiles it via the latex-on-http public API, and serves the PDF through a local HTTP server with automatic browser refresh via Server-Sent Events. No Overleaf switching. No Skim install. Just your editor and a browser.

Install

# via uv (recommended)
uv tool install nantex

# zero-install run
uvx nantex main.tex

# via pip
pip install nantex

Usage

nantex main.tex                       # watch mode, opens http://localhost:7474
nantex main.tex --once                # compile once to PDF and exit (no preview)
nantex main.tex --port 8080           # custom port
nantex main.tex --compiler xelatex   # use xelatex instead of pdflatex
nantex main.tex --output ~/out.pdf   # custom output path
nantex main.tex --api https://...    # self-hosted latex-on-http instance
nantex main.tex --share              # print LAN URL for collaborators
nantex main.tex --snippet fig:label  # preview a single figure or line range
nantex --mcp                         # run as MCP server for AI agents
nantex --version                     # print the installed version

Flags

One-shot builds

--once compiles to PDF and exits. It starts no preview server, opens no browser and needs no free port, so it fits scripts, pre-commit hooks and CI:

nantex resume.tex --once --output dist/resume.pdf

It exits 0 when the PDF is written and 1 on a lint error, compile error or missing --snippet target, so a failed build fails the job. --share is ignored with --once.

Project config

Add a .nantex.toml in your project directory to persist settings:

compiler = "xelatex"
port     = 7475

CLI flags always override the config file.

Multi-file projects

nantex automatically detects \input{} and \include{} directives, watches all discovered files, and bundles them in the API call. No extra configuration needed.

Collaboration

nantex main.tex --share
# Preview: http://localhost:7474
# Share:   http://192.168.0.113:7474  ← anyone on your network can open this

MCP server

Run nantex as an MCP server so AI agents (Claude, etc.) can compile LaTeX autonomously:

nantex --mcp

Exposes two tools:

• compile_latex(content, compiler, api_url) compiles once and returns success, pdf_path (a temp file), errors and message. It never raises and never starts a preview.
• get_compile_status() returns the result of the last compile.

To wire it into Claude Code, add to .mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "nantex": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["nantex", "--mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Examples

Ready-to-run examples are in the examples/ folder:

nantex examples/01-hello-world.tex   # minimal quickstart
nantex examples/02-math.tex          # equations, Maxwell's laws, matrices
nantex examples/03-resume.tex        # CV / resume template
nantex examples/04-report.tex        # report with table of contents + tables

Privacy

Your .tex file content is sent to the configured API on every compile. For sensitive documents, run a self-hosted latex-on-http instance and point --api at it.

Development

uv sync
uv run pytest

Every merge to main publishes a patch release to PyPI (.github/workflows/publish.yml); site-only changes don't.

Website

site/ is the static page at nantex.nandish.online: plain HTML, CSS and JS with no build step. Preview it with uv run python -m http.server -d site 7476. tests/test_site.py fails when a CLI flag, MCP tool or example is missing from the page. .github/workflows/site.yml deploys it on merge and posts a preview URL on pull requests.

License

MIT