Plagx Writing Companion for VS Code

Free academic writing checks inside VS Code. Plagx Writing Companion checks essays, theses and papers written in Markdown, plain text or LaTeX: citations and reference lists, BibTeX files, word limits, basic grammar and punctuation, and overall writing readiness.

By Plagiarism Checker X. For full plagiarism checks and AI-generated text detection, visit Text Similarity Detector. This free extension does not detect plagiarism or AI-generated text.

Features

Draft checks as you type

Open any .md, .txt or .tex file and suggestions appear as underlines and in the Problems panel:

Citations and references: in-text citations with no matching reference entry, references that are never cited, a missing reference section, and et al. formatting (APA or MLA)
Word limits: warnings when the draft goes over or under your minimum and maximum word counts (the reference list isn't counted)
Punctuation: double spaces, spaces before punctuation, missing spaces after punctuation, repeated punctuation, unmatched brackets and quotes, mixed quote styles
Basic grammar: repeated words, a/an mistakes, lowercase i, sentence capitals, commonly confused words
Structure: long sentences, long or single-sentence paragraphs, and required headings
Passive voice (optional)

Many suggestions have a quick fix: click the lightbulb or press Ctrl+. / Cmd+..

Writing readiness

The status bar shows the word count and reading time of the open draft. Click it to see the readiness summary: Ready, Ready with suggestions or Not ready, with the Flesch Reading Ease score and the error and warning counts.

Citations and bibliography

Format BibTeX as Reference List: turns a .bib file into an APA reference list or MLA Works Cited page
Check BibTeX References: finds duplicate entries, missing authors, titles and years, and invalid DOIs. Optionally verifies each DOI online.
Insert Reference from DOI: enter a DOI and insert the formatted reference, an in-text citation or a narrative citation

Commands

Open the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P / Cmd+Shift+P) and type Plagx:

Command	What it does
Plagx: Check Draft	Checks the current file now
Plagx: Show Writing Readiness	Readiness summary, word count, reading time and readability
Plagx: Format BibTeX as Reference List	Opens a formatted APA or MLA list beside a `.bib` file
Plagx: Check BibTeX References	Finds problems in a `.bib` file
Plagx: Insert Reference from DOI	Looks up a DOI and inserts a reference or citation
Plagx: Clear Suggestions	Removes all Plagx underlines

Settings

Setting	Default	Description
`plagx.style`	`apa`	Citation style: `apa` or `mla`
`plagx.minWords`	(none)	Minimum word count
`plagx.maxWords`	(none)	Maximum word count
`plagx.requiredHeadings`	`[]`	Headings the draft must contain, e.g. `["Introduction", "Conclusion"]`
`plagx.checks`	all except passive voice	Check groups: `length`, `references`, `punctuation`, `grammar`, `passive-voice`
`plagx.languages`	`markdown`, `plaintext`, `latex`	File types checked automatically
`plagx.checkOn`	`type`	`type`, `save` or `manual`

Example settings.json for a 2,000–2,500 word APA essay:

{
  "plagx.style": "apa",
  "plagx.minWords": 2000,
  "plagx.maxWords": 2500,
  "plagx.requiredHeadings": ["Introduction", "Conclusion"]
}

Privacy

All draft and BibTeX checks run locally inside VS Code. Your text is never uploaded. The extension connects to the internet only when you ask it to: Insert Reference from DOI and the optional online DOI check send the DOI to the public Crossref API. No accounts, API keys or telemetry are used.

How it works

The extension is a thin VS Code layer over two open-source Plagx libraries, so the checks match the other Plagx tools exactly:

plagx-preflight: draft checks, word counts, citation matching, grammar and punctuation
plagx-cite: APA and MLA formatting, BibTeX, DOI lookup and duplicate detection

Suggestions are rule-based. Always check them against your institution's style guide.

What this extension does not do

Plagx Writing Companion gives writing suggestions only. It does not check for plagiarism or detect AI-generated text. For full document checks, use Plagiarism Checker X or download it for desktop.

Plagx Writing Companion

Plagiarism Checker X