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 or newer (tested up to 3.14). Works on macOS, Linux, and Windows.

The graphical window needs Python's Tk toolkit, which most Linux distributions package separately (sudo apt install python3-tk on Debian/Ubuntu). The command line never needs it, and --gui tells you what to install if it is missing.

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:

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

# Draft a point-by-point response letter for the open comments
overleaf-comments-export --project-url … --out ./out --response-letter

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:

On Windows, Chrome 127+ uses App-Bound Encryption that browser-cookie3 can't decrypt. On Linux, snap-packaged browsers sandbox their cookie stores.

If reading the cookie from your browser fails, paste it instead — this works on every OS and browser:

overleaf-comments-export --project-url <url> --out ./out --cookie "PASTE_HERE"

Or set it once: export OVERLEAF_SESSION="PASTE_HERE". In the GUI, choose "Paste the cookie myself" and click How? for step-by-step instructions.

To find it: open Overleaf, press F12, go to Application (or Storage) → Cookies → https://www.overleaf.com, and copy the Value of overleaf_session2. Treat it like a password; it stops working when you sign out.

Troubleshooting

Feedback, questions, and contributing

This tool is actively maintained, and feedback shapes what gets built next.

• Something broke, or the output was wrong? Open an issue. You do not need to be a programmer — paste what the tool said and that is plenty. If Overleaf changes something, everything here stops working at once, and you may be the first person to notice.
• Want it to do something it doesn't? Suggest a feature. Tell me what you are trying to do, not just the feature — the real task usually leads somewhere better.
• Just a question, or want to show what you built with it? Discussions.
• Want to contribute code? See CONTRIBUTING.md. It takes about two minutes to get the tests running, and there are items marked help wanted in ROADMAP.md.

Never include your session cookie in an issue — it is a password for your Overleaf account, and nobody needs it to fix a bug.

Maintained by Shivang Gupta, who wrote it to deal with the review comments on his own papers.

What's coming next

See ROADMAP.md. Short version: a response-letter scaffold, writing out the full source so an AI can see more than a snippet, and a diff between two exports so you can work through review comments in waves.

Changes are recorded in CHANGELOG.md.

A caution

This tool uses Overleaf's internal endpoints, which are undocumented and can change without notice. It identifies itself honestly in every request, backs off when asked to, and only ever reads — it cannot modify your project. Even so, it may stop working the day Overleaf changes something. If that happens, please say so in an issue.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.