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papis-cli-guide

Guide to Papis command-line document and bibliography manager for researchers

skills/writing/citation/papis-cli-guide/SKILL.md

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# Papis CLI Document Manager Guide

## Overview

Papis is a powerful command-line document and bibliography manager with over 2,000 GitHub stars, designed for researchers who prefer terminal-based workflows. Written in Python, it provides a fast, scriptable, and highly customizable alternative to GUI-based reference managers like Zotero or Mendeley.

The philosophy behind Papis is that bibliographic data should be stored in simple, human-readable files organized in a plain directory structure. Each document in a Papis library is a folder containing a YAML metadata file (`info.yaml`) and associated files (PDFs, supplementary materials, notes). This approach means your library is inherently portable, versionable with Git, and accessible through any tool that can read files and directories.

For researchers who spend most of their time in terminals, use Vim or Emacs for writing, and prefer scriptable tools over graphical interfaces, Papis offers a natural fit. It integrates with academic databases for metadata retrieval, supports BibTeX and BibLaTeX export, and provides an extensible plugin system for custom workflows. Despite its command-line interface, Papis also includes optional GUI pickers and a web interface for when visual browsing is helpful.

## Installation and Setup

Install Papis using pip or your system package manager: