Inleaf Reader turns VS Code into a focused reading space for papers and books. It keeps frequent actions close to the page and lets you use the AI tools you already trust beside your document. You can ask for background, investigate a question, annotate a passage, translate text, or save a word without repeatedly leaving the reading context.
Your reading data stays in ordinary files next to the PDF. This means it remains under your control, can be backed up or synchronized with the tools you already use, and is straightforward for AI tools to inspect and work with.
- Read comfortably: continuous scrolling, page progress, fit controls, and trackpad zoom.
- Bring your own AI: work beside Codex, Claude Code, or another assistant instead of being locked into a paid reader-specific AI.
- Annotate in place: highlight, underline, add notes and tags, then edit them beside the original text.
- Translate as you read: use the bundled offline dictionary, local Argos Translate, DeepSeek, or LibreTranslate.
- Build a wordbook: save useful English words and their structured definitions for each PDF.
- Keep data AI-ready: annotations, vocabulary, exports, and progress use portable files beside the document.
- Stay focused: the side panel starts hidden and appears only when you ask for it.
Inleaf Reader is especially useful if you:
- read papers or technical books while working in VS Code;
- want annotations and progress to stay with the original PDF;
- use coding assistants such as Codex or Claude Code beside your reading window;
- prefer offline or user-controlled tools over a mandatory cloud account.
Download the VSIX from the latest GitHub release, then choose Extensions: Install from VSIX... in VS Code.
You can also install it from a terminal:
code --install-extension inleaf-reader-0.1.1.vsixAfter installation, run Developer: Reload Window once if the reader command does not appear immediately.
Moving from an earlier pre-Inleaf build? VS Code treats the current
ziming.inleaf-readeridentity as a separate extension. Install Inleaf Reader, remove the earlier extension, and reopen each PDF once. Existing local sidecars beside that PDF are copied into.inleaf-reader/without overwriting current files. Provider settings and API keys should be configured again.
When the public Marketplace release is available, search for Inleaf Reader in the Extensions view and select Install.
- Open a PDF in VS Code, then click the blue nested-book icon in the editor title bar. You can also right-click the PDF and choose Inleaf Reader: Open Paper Reader.
- Select text to highlight it, underline it, write a note, translate it, or save a word.
- Continue reading. Annotations and page progress are saved automatically—there is no separate Save button.
The right panel stays hidden at startup. Use Show panel to browse annotations, saved words, and translation results. Use the adjacent Settings button to enable or hide reading capabilities, change their panel order, and configure translation without leaving the reader.
For a document named paper.pdf, Inleaf Reader automatically maintains these
versioned JSON files in a .inleaf-reader folder beside it:
.inleaf-reader/
paper.pdf.annotations.json # highlights, underlines, notes, and tags
paper.pdf.wordbook.json # saved words
paper.pdf.progress.json # last reading position
The following files are created only when you choose the matching export action:
paper.pdf.annotations.md # Markdown export
paper.pdf.annotated.pdf # PDF export with visible marks and comments
These are normal local files. You can copy or synchronize them through Git,
iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Syncthing, or another file-sync tool. JSON updates are
written atomically, validated when read, and versioned with schemaVersion.
Previous valid JSON is kept as a .bak recovery file. If the current file is
invalid, Inleaf Reader restores the backup and preserves the unreadable copy
with a .corrupt-<timestamp> suffix. Legacy array-based sidecars are migrated
automatically. Because the formats are structured and documented, an AI tool
with access to your workspace can reuse your annotations and vocabulary without
depending on a proprietary cloud database.
The top-level JSON shapes are intentionally simple:
{ "schemaVersion": 1, "annotations": [] }
{ "schemaVersion": 1, "words": [] }
{ "schemaVersion": 1, "progress": { "page": 12, "updatedAt": "..." } }If a PDF is moved or renamed, a lightweight content fingerprint helps Inleaf Reader find and copy its missing sidecar files. Existing files at the new location are never overwritten.
| Mode | Best for | Network or setup |
|---|---|---|
| Bundled ECDICT | Looking up one English word | Offline, no setup |
| Argos Translate | Local sentence and paragraph translation | Offline after installing Python and a language model |
| DeepSeek | Higher-quality academic translation | Uses your own API key and sends selected text to DeepSeek |
| LibreTranslate | A self-hosted or compatible translation service | Sends selected text to the endpoint you configure |
Single English words always prefer the bundled ECDICT dictionary, which contains about 770,000 entries and can show phonetics, Chinese meanings, English definitions, parts of speech, and word forms. The dictionary is split into compressed shards; a background worker loads only the shard needed for the current word, so ordinary PDF startup and lookup do not require the full dictionary in memory.
Run Inleaf Reader: Set DeepSeek API Key or select DeepSeek from the reader's Settings page. The key is stored in VS Code SecretStorage and is never written to the Webview, settings, sidecar files, or logs.
Run Inleaf Reader: Clear DeepSeek API Key to remove it.
Choose LibreTranslate and provide a compatible endpoint from the reader's
Settings page. Advanced users may set inleafReader.translationProvider
and inleafReader.libreTranslateEndpoint directly.
Optional: set up local Argos Translate
The VSIX does not include Python or the Argos neural model because those dependencies are specific to each operating system.
On macOS or Linux:
python3 -m venv ~/.inleaf-reader-argos
source ~/.inleaf-reader-argos/bin/activate
python -m pip install --upgrade pip argostranslateOn Windows PowerShell:
py -m venv $HOME\.inleaf-reader-argos
& $HOME\.inleaf-reader-argos\Scripts\Activate.ps1
python -m pip install --upgrade pip argostranslateInstall the English-to-Chinese model with the official Argos package API:
import argostranslate.package
argostranslate.package.update_package_index()
packages = argostranslate.package.get_available_packages()
package = next(
item for item in packages
if item.from_code == "en" and item.to_code == "zh"
)
argostranslate.package.install_from_path(package.download())Then set the Argos Python path from the reader's Settings page. Advanced
users may set inleafReader.argosPythonPath directly. For example:
{
"inleafReader.translationProvider": "argos",
"inleafReader.argosPythonPath": "/Users/you/.inleaf-reader-argos/bin/python"
}The first sentence translation starts the local daemon and loads the model. Later requests reuse that process.
If translation does not work, run Inleaf Reader: Diagnose Translation Setup to see what is available.
- Inleaf Reader does not currently collect telemetry or analytics.
- PDFs and all reading sidecars stay in paths you choose.
- Offline ECDICT lookup and local Argos translation stay on your machine.
- DeepSeek and LibreTranslate receive selected text only when you choose those providers.
- A lightweight path index is stored in VS Code global state for move/rename recovery; annotation and wordbook content is not stored there.
Review the privacy terms of any external translation provider before sending sensitive text.
- Scanned PDFs without a text layer cannot be selected unless OCR is performed separately.
- Header, footer, page-number, and figure exclusion is heuristic because many PDFs do not expose reliable document structure.
- Argos Translate requires separate Python and language-model installation.
- The current dictionary and local translation workflow are optimized for English-to-Chinese reading.
- Inleaf Reader is still in preview; keep important PDFs and sidecar data backed up.
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
Inleaf Reader: Open Paper Reader |
Opens the active PDF or lets you choose one. |
Inleaf Reader: Set DeepSeek API Key |
Stores or replaces a DeepSeek key securely. |
Inleaf Reader: Clear DeepSeek API Key |
Removes the stored DeepSeek key. |
Inleaf Reader: Diagnose Translation Setup |
Checks dictionary and translation readiness. |
See CONTRIBUTING.md for local setup, tests, and the manual reader checklist. Issues and pull requests are welcome on GitHub.
Third-party components and bundled assets remain subject to their respective licenses. See THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md for attribution.
Inleaf Reader is open-source software released under the Apache License 2.0. You may use, modify, distribute, and use the software commercially under the license terms. The license also provides an explicit patent grant and requires applicable copyright and attribution notices to be preserved.