arXiv Daily

Turn daily arXiv feeds into a manageable, searchable reading list — right inside Obsidian.

Getting Started · 中文说明

Every day, hundreds of new papers appear on arXiv. arXiv Daily helps you stay on top of the ones that matter: it fetches papers from your chosen categories, uses an LLM to filter and summarize by your research topics, and writes structured Markdown reports into your vault — all on a configurable schedule.

The pure Rust standalone application is being developed in this branch. See Rust standalone development for workspace commands and architecture boundaries.

The result is a compact daily reading list you can skim, star, and act on, without leaving Obsidian.

Why arXiv Daily?

• Save time: let the LLM filter hundreds of papers down to the handful relevant to your topics, with structured summaries (core problem, method, result, relevance, limitations).
• Stay organized: daily reports, paper notes, and PDFs all live as plain Markdown in your vault — searchable, linkable, and future-proof.
• Review across days: the Dashboard gives you a calendar view, full-text search, topic/date/status filters, and sorting to revisit papers across dates.
• Works with your workflow: star important papers, open arXiv or PDF links, create detailed notes for papers you want to dig into. When a paper is ready for your formal library, import it into Zotero as usual.
• Set and forget: configure once — categories, topics, LLM provider, schedule — and the plugin runs daily. Missed days are caught up automatically.

Quick Start

1. Install and enable the plugin.
2. Open Settings → arXiv Daily.
3. Choose an LLM provider and enter an API key.
4. Select one or more arXiv categories (e.g. cs.CL, astro-ph, stat.ML).
5. Add research topics — natural-language descriptions of what you want to track.
6. Enable the scheduler, or open the Dashboard and click Run Today.

For a detailed walkthrough, see Getting Started.

Dashboard

The Dashboard is the main entry point after setup.

• Starred / All tabs: star the papers that matter; unstarred papers stay neutral.
• Calendar: dates with reports are marked; today is highlighted; click any date to open its report.
• Search & filters: filter by keyword, topic, date range, note presence, or detail availability.
• Sort: by starred, recently seen, published date, topic, or title.
• Paper actions: from each row, open or create a paper note, open the daily report, open the arXiv page, open or download a PDF.
• Batch operations: run today, run pending lookback dates, or run a specific date.

Daily Reports

Each daily report is a Markdown file. Selected papers include:

• Authors and arXiv link
• Source sections used for summarization
• Core problem, key method, main result
• Why it is relevant to your topics
• Limitations or boundaries
• Watch/highlight checkboxes

Highlighting a paper in the daily report maps to a Dashboard star.

Output Layout

Files are organized under arxiv-daily/ in your vault:

arxiv-daily/
  daily/
    2026-06-13.md
  papers/
    2606.12345.md
  pdfs/
    2606.12345.pdf
  .index/
    papers.json
    run-state.json

• daily/YYYY-MM-DD.md — daily discovery report grouped by topic
• papers/<arxiv_id>.md — detailed paper notes
• pdfs/<arxiv_id>.pdf — downloaded PDFs
• .index/papers.json — local paper index (read by the Dashboard)
• .index/run-state.json — scheduler run state

Installation

arXiv Daily is desktop-only.

Community Plugins

1. Open Settings → Community plugins → Browse.
2. Search for arXiv Daily.
3. Install and enable it.

BRAT (Beta)

1. Install BRAT.
2. Open BRAT settings → Add Beta plugin.
3. Enter: tdccccc/arxiv-daily

Manual Install

Download manifest.json, main.js, and styles.css from the latest release and place them in:

<vault>/.obsidian/plugins/arxiv-daily/

Then restart Obsidian and enable arXiv Daily.

Commands

Action	Where
Open Dashboard	Ribbon icon or command palette
Run today	Dashboard toolbar
Run pending lookback dates	Dashboard toolbar
Run a specific date	Dashboard More menu or command palette
Summarize by arXiv ID	Dashboard More menu or command palette
Open a daily report	Dashboard calendar
Star a paper	Dashboard star button or daily report highlight checkbox

Network & Privacy

• Connects to arxiv.org and export.arxiv.org to fetch listings, abstracts, and PDFs.
• Connects to your configured LLM provider. Sent content includes paper titles, abstracts, and selected text snippets needed for filtering and summarization.
• API keys are stored in Obsidian plugin settings. They are never included in logs.
• No client-side telemetry.
• Generated files are written only under arxiv-daily/ in your vault.

Standalone Headless CLI

The Rust standalone branch provides arxiv-dailyd and arxiv-dailyctl for servers and cron-style operation without Node.js or a display server.

printf '%s' "$LLM_API_KEY" | arxiv-dailyctl init --headless --api-key-stdin \
  --category cs.AI \
  --topic 'agents:Scientific Agents:Agents for scientific discovery:detail'

arxiv-dailyctl daemon start
arxiv-dailyctl run-pending
arxiv-dailyctl logs --follow

See Headless daemon and CLI for configuration, JSON output, exit codes, import/export, rollback, and the Linux systemd user service.

Development

cd plugin
npm install
npm test
npm run build

License

MIT