Academic Inline

Academic Inline is a VS Code extension for Copilot-style academic writing assistance. It reads a bounded window around the cursor, asks your locally authenticated Codex CLI for a short continuation, and displays the result as VS Code's native grey inline text.

Press Tab to accept a visible suggestion or Escape to dismiss it. Press Alt+\ with no selection to request one manually. Select any text and press Alt+\ to request an instructed rewrite with a diff and accept/reject choice.

Features

• Native grey inline completions in LaTeX, Markdown, plain text, and reStructuredText.
• Automatic suggestions after a configurable typing pause.
• Manual suggestions with Alt+\ or Academic Inline: Trigger Suggestion.
• A combined model and reasoning-strength picker populated from the model catalog bundled with your installed Codex CLI.
• Automatic grey inline completions capped at 50 words, without a generation deadline. Alt+\ requests are unrestricted.
• Instruction-driven paragraph rewriting with VS Code's native diff viewer and explicit accept/reject controls.
• Evidence-aware academic prompting that preserves terminology and avoids invented citations, data, authors, results, and bibliography keys.
• LaTeX-safe output and automatic suppression inside LaTeX comments.
• Overleaf Workshop support for both local and virtual project documents.
• No API key stored by the extension. Authentication is handled by Codex.

Download

Download the newest academic-inline-*.vsix file from GitHub Releases. Do not download the repository's source ZIP unless you intend to build the extension yourself.

Requirements

• Visual Studio Code 1.96 or newer.
• A current Codex CLI installation and a ChatGPT account that can use Codex.
• VS Code's built-in editor.inlineSuggest.enabled setting enabled.

The extension uses your local Codex authentication; it does not ask for or store an API key. See the official Codex CLI guide for current installation and authentication options.

Windows installation

1. Install and sign in to Codex

Install Node.js if npm is not already available, then run in PowerShell:

npm install -g @openai/codex
codex

Complete Sign in with ChatGPT the first time Codex starts, then exit Codex and verify:

codex --version

If Codex came with the Codex desktop app and already works in PowerShell, you can skip the npm installation.

2. Install Academic Inline

Download the VSIX from the latest release. In VS Code, open Extensions, select the ... menu, choose Install from VSIX..., select the downloaded file, and reload VS Code.

Alternatively, if the code command is on PATH:

code --install-extension "$HOME\Downloads\academic-inline-0.2.3.vsix" --force

macOS installation

1. Install and sign in to Codex

Open Terminal and use the official Codex installer:

curl -fsSL https://chatgpt.com/codex/install.sh | sh
codex

Complete Sign in with ChatGPT the first time Codex starts, then exit Codex and verify:

codex --version

You may instead install with npm if you already use Node.js:

npm install -g @openai/codex

2. Install Academic Inline

Download the VSIX from the latest release. In VS Code, open Extensions, select the ... menu, choose Install from VSIX..., select the downloaded file, and reload VS Code.

For terminal installation, first run Shell Command: Install 'code' command in PATH from the VS Code command palette, then run:

code --install-extension "$HOME/Downloads/academic-inline-0.2.3.vsix" --force

Verify the installation

Run Academic Inline: Check Codex CLI from the VS Code command palette. If Codex is installed somewhere unusual, set academicInline.codexPath to its full executable path.

Use

Open a .tex, Markdown, text, or reStructuredText document and continue writing. After the configured pause, Academic Inline uses the persistent codex app-server process and returns one short continuation. VS Code renders it as grey text.

• Tab accepts the visible suggestion using VS Code's standard inline-suggestion binding.
• Escape dismisses it.
• Alt+\ with no selection explicitly triggers a grey suggestion, including in places with less than the automatic minimum context.
• Select one or more sentences and press Alt+\, then enter a short instruction such as make the notation consistent with the preceding text. Codex can read the configured unselected context before and after the selection, but the proposed replacement and accepted edit are limited to the selected text. In the native diff, press Tab to accept or Escape to reject. A persistent status-bar reminder stays visible until you decide. The source document is unchanged until you accept.
• Click the Academic: ... · ... status-bar item to select both a model and reasoning strength.
• Use Academic Inline: Enable/Disable to toggle the extension for the current workspace.

Overleaf Workshop

Academic Inline registers its completion provider for every VS Code document scheme, then checks the document's language ID. This means it can read an Overleaf Workshop virtual document through VS Code's TextDocument API without needing direct access to the Overleaf server or its filesystem.

For an Overleaf document, confirm that the language indicator in the lower-right corner says LaTeX. If an Overleaf extension uses a different language ID, add it to academicInline.allowedLanguages.

The text is still passed directly through the VS Code document API even when it has no local filesystem path. Codex runs in an empty temporary directory unless you explicitly enable academicInline.allowWorkspaceRead.

Model selection

Run Academic Inline: Select Model and Strength or click the status-bar item. The first picker asks codex debug models --bundled for the models available in your installed CLI. Choose Use Codex default to inherit the model in your Codex configuration, or enter any custom model ID accepted by your installation. The second picker shows the strengths supported by that model. You can also run Academic Inline: Select Reasoning Strength independently.

academicInline.reasoningEffort defaults to low because inline completion is latency-sensitive. Medium, high, extra-high, and maximum settings can improve difficult work and are allowed to finish without a generation deadline.

Important settings

Privacy and safety

By default, each request exposes only the configured context window and metadata such as the language ID and filename to the locally installed Codex CLI. A persistent app-server process avoids paying CLI startup cost for every keystroke, while each writing request uses a fresh ephemeral Codex thread in a new empty temporary directory. The extension does not record document content or raw Codex error streams. Threads use a read-only sandbox, deny approvals, and ask Codex to return text without tools.

academicInline.allowWorkspaceRead is an explicit opt-in for users who want Codex to see local project files. When enabled, the process runs from academicInline.workingDirectory, the document folder, or a local workspace folder, and the read-only sandbox can inspect files there.

The content still leaves VS Code through your authenticated Codex service. Apply your institution's data-handling policy before using unpublished, confidential, personal, or restricted material.

Inline text can sound plausible while being wrong. Review every accepted completion, especially factual claims, citations, equations, and interpretations. The prompt refuses to fabricate evidence, but that is a guardrail rather than a guarantee.

Academic writing guidance

The completion prompt adapts principles from the Academic Writing Toolkit and the open-source research-writing-skill: preserve the author's intended meaning and terminology, tie claims to available evidence, prefer verifiable statements over vague evaluation, follow each manuscript section's rhetorical purpose, and never invent data or references.

Development

The extension is dependency-free at runtime and uses CommonJS so it can be launched directly in an Extension Development Host.

npm test
npm run check
npx @vscode/vsce package --allow-missing-repository

Press F5 in this folder to launch an Extension Development Host. Open a writing document there, then run Academic Inline: Check Codex CLI before testing a completion.

Troubleshooting

• No grey text: check editor.inlineSuggest.enabled, the document language ID, and academicInline.enabled.
• Codex CLI error: run Academic Inline: Check Codex CLI, then inspect Academic Inline: Show Logs.
• Slow suggestions: choose a faster model or lower reasoning strength. Manual Alt+\ and selected-text rewrites have no generation deadline, but you can cancel a rewrite from its progress notification.
• No suggestion in a LaTeX comment: use Alt+\ manually or disable academicInline.disableInLatexComments.
• Tab inserts indentation: a suggestion must be visible, and no other extension should override editor.action.inlineSuggest.commit.

License

MIT