OverCite

OverCite helps you add LaTeX citations in VS Code without leaving the editor.

Place your cursor inside a \cite{...} command, press Alt+Shift+E, review likely matches from NASA ADS/SciX, and insert the selected BibTeX entry directly into your project bibliography.

If OverCite was helpful in preparing your manuscript, you can acknowledge it with:

This work made use of OverCite, an in-editor citation tool for LaTeX.

Getting Started

1. Install by searching for OverCite in VS Code Extensions.
2. Open Settings, search for OverCite, and paste your NASA ADS or SciX API token into OverCite: Ads Api Token.
3. That's it. Open a .tex file, place the cursor inside a \cite{...} command, and press Alt+Shift+E to get started.

To get an API token, sign in to NASA ADS or SciX and go to Settings -> API Token.

More details: https://github.com/cheyanneshariat/OverCite

What It Does

• Detects the active \cite{...} token under the cursor
• Uses local sentence and context text to search ADS/SciX
• Also supports a simple author/year-only fallback mode
• Also supports a direct ADS query mode for the raw token inside \cite{...}
• Shows ranked paper matches in a VS Code quick-pick list
• Inserts or reuses the matching BibTeX entry in the target .bib file
• Rewrites the active citation key in the source .tex file

Current Behavior

• Focus stays in the source .tex editor after insertion
• BibTeX updates happen directly through the VS Code workspace API
• The same citation parsing, ADS query logic, and BibTeX insertion logic used in the Overleaf extension are copied into this package so the two versions stay isolated

Settings

• overcite.adsApiToken (accepts either a NASA ADS or SciX API token)
• overcite.contextWindowChars
• overcite.citationKeyMode (authoryear, informative, bibcode, or typed)
• overcite.bibliographyInsertMode
• overcite.defaultSearchMode
• overcite.projectBibFileOverrides

Commands

• OverCite: Resolve Citation (Alt+Shift+E)
• OverCite: Resolve Citation (Simple Search) (Alt+Shift+S)
• OverCite: Resolve Citation (ADS Query)
• OverCite: Show Diagnostics

ADS Query Mode

OverCite: Resolve Citation (ADS Query) sends the active token inside \cite{...} directly to ADS/SciX as the query string.

Examples:

• \citep{Perlmutter99} with the normal Resolve Citation command for contextual mode
• \citep{Schlegel} with Resolve Citation (Simple Search) when you want author-only lookup
• \citep{title:"emcee"}
• \citep{author:"El-Badry" year:2022 title:"magnetic braking"}
• \citep{first_author:"Hunsch" year:1998}

This mode is useful when you already know the literal ADS query you want to run and do not want contextual expansion from the surrounding sentence.

Custom Shortcut

There is no default keybinding for ADS Query, to keep the default shortcut set small. If you want one, add a VS Code keyboard shortcut for overcite.resolveCitationDirect, for example:

{
  "key": "alt+shift+d",
  "command": "overcite.resolveCitationDirect",
  "when": "editorTextFocus"
}

Development

cd vscode-extension
npm test