Paper Bartender

A CLI tool to help researchers manage multiple paper submission deadlines by tracking milestones into daily tasks using AI.

Features

• Natural language interface - Just tell it what you want in plain English
• Track multiple papers with deadlines
• Link papers to PDF files for context-aware task generation
• Create sequential milestones with automatic task decomposition
• AI reads your paper's PDF to generate tasks tailored to your current progress
• View today's tasks at a glance

Installation

# Using pip
pip install paper-bartender

# Or using pipx (recommended for CLI tools)
pipx install paper-bartender

Configuration

Set your API key:

# For Anthropic Claude (recommended)
export PAPER_BARTENDER_ANTHROPIC_API_KEY="your-anthropic-key"

# Or for OpenAI
export PAPER_BARTENDER_OPENAI_API_KEY="your-openai-key"

Usage

The do Command - Natural Language Interface

The easiest way to use Paper Bartender is with natural language:

# Add a paper with deadline
paper-bartender do "add paper ABC deadline Feb 20"

# Add a paper with PDF for smarter task generation
paper-bartender do "add paper ABC deadline Feb 20 pdf ~/papers/draft.pdf"

# Link a PDF to an existing paper
paper-bartender do "add pdf ~/Downloads/draft.pdf to ABC"

# Add a single milestone
paper-bartender do "milestone for ABC: finish experiments by Feb 10"

# Add multiple milestones at once (they become sequential!)
paper-bartender do "for ABC paper: fix pipeline bug by 2/4, rerun experiments by 2/10, rewrite results by 2/15"

When you add multiple milestones, they are automatically sequenced:

• fix pipeline bug: Today → 2/4
• rerun experiments: 2/4 → 2/10
• rewrite results: 2/10 → 2/15

View Your Tasks

# Show today's tasks (default)
paper-bartender

# Show all upcoming progress
paper-bartender all

# Show timeline for a specific paper
paper-bartender timeline "ABC"

# Or filter any view by paper
paper-bartender today --paper "ABC"
paper-bartender all --paper "ABC"

Mark Tasks Complete

# Mark a task as done (partial match)
paper-bartender done "fix pipeline"

# Skip a task
paper-bartender skip "review literature"

Example Workflow

# 1. Add a paper with your PDF draft
paper-bartender do "add paper ICML Submission deadline Feb 20 pdf ~/papers/icml-draft.pdf"

# 2. Add all your milestones in one command
paper-bartender do "for ICML Submission: fix training bug by 2/4, run all experiments by 2/10, rewrite results section by 2/15, final polish by 2/19"

# 3. Check your tasks daily
paper-bartender

# 4. Mark tasks as done
paper-bartender done "identify bug"

# 5. See the full schedule
paper-bartender all

Today's tasks with progress bars:

📋 Today's Tasks (Sat, Jan 31)
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Paper            ┃ Checkpoint                                    ┃ Detailed Task                   ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ ICML Submission  │ ███░░░░░░░░░  25% fix training bug            │ Review pipeline code and...     │
│ Other Paper      │ ██████░░░░░░  50% finish experiments          │ N/A                             │
└──────────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────────┘

Timeline for a specific paper:

$ paper-bartender timeline "ICML Submission"

📅 Upcoming Progress  (8 tasks across 5 days)

Today (1 task)
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Paper            ┃ Checkpoint                                    ┃ Detailed Task                   ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ ICML Submission  │ ███░░░░░░░░░  25% fix training bug            │ Review pipeline code...         │
└──────────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────────┘

Tomorrow (1 task)
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Paper            ┃ Checkpoint                                    ┃ Detailed Task                   ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ ICML Submission  │ ██████░░░░░░  50% fix training bug            │ Implement fixes...              │
└──────────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────────┘

Advanced Commands

paper-bartender add paper "My Paper" --deadline 2025-05-15 --pdf ~/draft.pdf

paper-bartender add milestone "My Paper" "Write intro" --due 5/10

# With priority (1-5)
paper-bartender add milestone "My Paper" "Experiments" --due 5/5 --priority 3

# Skip auto task generation
paper-bartender add milestone "My Paper" "Review" --due 5/8 --no-decompose

paper-bartender list papers
paper-bartender list papers --archived
paper-bartender list milestones "My Paper"
paper-bartender list milestones "My Paper" --completed

# Re-generate tasks (re-reads PDF for updated context)
paper-bartender decompose "My Paper" --force

# Preview without saving
paper-bartender decompose "My Paper" --dry-run

paper-bartender delete paper "My Paper"
paper-bartender delete milestone "My Paper" "Write intro"

# Clear everything (creates backup first)
paper-bartender clear

# Restore from backup
paper-bartender restore

Commands Reference

Data Storage

All data is stored locally at ~/.paper-bartender/data.json. Backups are created automatically before destructive operations.

Development

poetry install
pytest
mypy --strict paper_bartender
ruff format . && ruff check --fix .

License

Apache 2.0 License