Find how scholars phrased it — semantic phrasing search over your own Zotero full-text, with on-demand, grounded rewrite suggestions.
Select a sentence in your draft → Parlance retrieves passages from your Zotero full-text corpus (via zsearch from zotero-cli-agent) where other authors expressed a similar idea, and lists them with source + attribution in a side panel. On demand, it can also generate grounded rewrite suggestions — a short diagnosis, 2–3 rewrites (each citing the passage it draws on), and reusable phrasings — using Gemini. Suggestions are clearly marked as model output and the extension never edits your text.
Requirements
This is a thin front-end over a local setup; it is most useful if you already run:
zsearch (from zotero-cli-agent) on your PATH, or set parlance.zsearchPath to its absolute path.
A populated vector index over your Zotero full-text (zsearch sync).
GEMINI_API_KEY available in the VS Code process environment — used for retrieval embeddings and, optionally, for rewrite suggestions. (Launch VS Code from a shell where this variable is set.)
(Optional)TOKEN_PLAN_API_KEY / BAILIAN_TOKEN_PLAN_API_KEY / QWEN_TOKEN_PLAN_API_KEY — if set, rewrite suggestions automatically fall back to Qwen Token Plan whenever Gemini is unavailable (e.g. 503 high-demand).
Usage
Select a sentence in any editor.
Run Parlance: 查找相近表达 (right-click → context menu, or the Command Palette).
The Parlance side panel shows similar passages, each with distance and source (author · year · title), plus Copy and Jump-to-Zotero buttons.
Click ✍ 生成改写建议 (or run Parlance: 生成改写建议) for grounded rewrite suggestions based on those passages.
Settings
Setting
Default
Description
parlance.zsearchPath
zsearch
Path to the zsearch executable
parlance.topK
10
Number of passages to retrieve
parlance.suggestModel
gemini-3.5-flash
Primary Gemini model for suggestions
parlance.suggestMaxPassages
6
Max retrieved passages fed to the model
parlance.fallbackModel
qwen3.6-flash
Qwen Token Plan model used when Gemini fails; use qwen3.6-plus if you want the stronger option
parlance.fallbackBaseUrl
Aliyun Token Plan Anthropic endpoint
Anthropic-compatible base URL for the Qwen text fallback
Privacy & grounding
Rewrite suggestions are generated only from the passages already retrieved from your own library; the model is instructed not to invent sources, statute numbers, authors, or facts. Transient model errors (e.g. 503) are retried with backoff, and if Gemini stays unavailable the request automatically falls back to Qwen Token Plan (when a Token Plan key is set). The suggestion panel labels which model produced it (Gemini or the Qwen fallback). Your draft text is never modified by the extension — suggestions are copy-only.
