📚 paperlib¶

Tool	Description
paperlib	Filesystem-first scientific paper archive and archaeology tool. Folder-centric, Git-native, human-in-the-loop.

paperlib¶

paperlib is a filesystem-first scientific paper archive and archaeology tool.

Unlike traditional reference managers such as Zotero, Mendeley, or Paperpile, the goal is not to build a centralized bibliography database or cloud library.

Instead, paperlib treats the filesystem itself as the source of truth:

papers remain normal files in normal folders
metadata lives locally beside curated folders
Git tracks structure and tooling, not PDFs
AI assists extraction and organization, but humans remain in control
historical folder structure and project context are preserved rather than flattened

The project grew from a long-lived experimental physics paper archive containing:

active research references
inherited lab collections
saved literature searches
spectroscopy and plasma-material interaction papers
project-specific topic explorations accumulated over many years

The goal is not "perfect paper management," but sustainable long-term scientific memory and low-friction knowledge organization.