maximebaudette/latex

LaTeX Skill (via Tectonic)

Key facts

• Compiler: Tectonic — single binary, auto-downloads packages on first compile, no full TeX Live needed
• Projects live in: ~/.openclaw/agent_mars/correspondance/<project-name>/
• Output always goes to: <project-dir>/output/<name>.pdf
• Multi-file works: tectonic resolves \input{} relative to where you run it from

---

Setup (first time — or if compile fails with "tectonic not found")

Step 1: Check if tectonic is already available

command -v tectonic || ls $HOME/bin/tectonic 2>/dev/null || echo "NOT FOUND"

Step 2: If not found, install it

bash ~/.agents/skills/latex/scripts/setup.sh

This downloads the tectonic binary from GitHub releases into ~/bin/. Only needed once per machine.

Step 3: Confirm

$(command -v tectonic || echo $HOME/bin/tectonic) --version

Expected output: tectonic X.Y.Z

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Task 1 — Create a new project

Do these steps in order. No exploration needed.

Step 1: Create the directory structure

mkdir -p /home/mars/.openclaw/agent_mars/correspondance/PROJECT_NAME/output

Step 2: Create /home/mars/.openclaw/agent_mars/correspondance/PROJECT_NAME/latex-project.json

{
  "name": "PROJECT_NAME",
  "entrypoints": [
    { "file": "main.tex", "label": "Main document" }
  ],
  "upload": {
    "gdrive_folder_id": null,
    "email": null
  }
}

Step 3: Create /home/mars/.openclaw/agent_mars/correspondance/PROJECT_NAME/main.tex with the document content.

Step 4: Create /home/mars/.openclaw/agent_mars/correspondance/PROJECT_NAME/.gitignore

output/

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Task 2 — Compile a project

One command — run from the project directory:

TECTONIC=$(command -v tectonic || echo $HOME/bin/tectonic) && cd /home/mars/.openclaw/agent_mars/correspondance/PROJECT_NAME && mkdir -p output && $TECTONIC --outdir output main.tex

Replace main.tex with the actual entrypoint filename if different.

Output PDF will be at:

/home/mars/.openclaw/agent_mars/correspondance/PROJECT_NAME/output/main.pdf

For multi-entrypoint projects, check latex-project.json to see the list of .tex files, then compile each one the same way.

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Task 3 — Upload / share the PDF

Upload to Google Drive

/home/mars/bin/gws drive upload /home/mars/.openclaw/agent_mars/correspondance/PROJECT_NAME/output/main.pdf --parent FOLDER_ID

To find a Drive folder ID: ~/bin/gws drive list --type folder

Send by email (as attachment)

Use the gws-gmail skill. The PDF is at: /home/mars/.openclaw/agent_mars/correspondance/PROJECT_NAME/output/main.pdf

Auto-upload on compile

Set gdrive_folder_id or email in latex-project.json. Then run:

bash /home/mars/.agents/skills/latex/scripts/compile.sh /home/mars/.openclaw/agent_mars/correspondance/PROJECT_NAME

The compile script handles auto-upload when those fields are set.

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Templates

Before writing a document from scratch, check if /home/mars/.openclaw/agent_mars/correspondance/templates/ exists. If it does, look for a suitable template there and copy it into the new project directory.

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Compile errors

Tectonic prints errors with file name and line number. Read the output carefully — it is usually a missing \end{}, typo in a package name, or encoding issue. Fix the .tex file and re-run the compile command.

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Troubleshooting

| Problem | Fix | |---|---| | tectonic: command not found | Run setup: bash ~/.agents/skills/latex/scripts/setup.sh | | cannot find file X.tex | Make sure you cd into the project dir before running tectonic | | Packages downloading slowly | Normal on first compile — tectonic auto-downloads only what's needed | | \input{file} not found | Run tectonic from the project root (the cd command above handles this) |