Public developer API

The problem with this approach is that for better/worse, Paperpile is very, very slow to get new features (and/or, they are spread across enough platforms that no specific platform gets very many few features). Fortunately for PP, a good chunk of your audience know how to program (i.e., those in sciences, computer science, etc) and would likely build things on top of the public API to address shortcomings.

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I think you underestimate the value add of plugins + API features. Particularly with the rise of LLMs.

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Any suggestions on how to get highlight summaries out of PaperPile and into Roam Research, as a public API doesn’t seem to be a priority for the roadmap (in this day and age??)

It may be possible in upcoming time while till now it is not apper. In future it may be happened.
Thanks

I would like to add a +1 for the addition of a Public API. The possibilities seem almost mind-blowing, AI/LLM analysis, Obsidian etc. integration, creating value-add services etc. I’m doing quite a lot of this just now, but there is just this manual bit where Paperpile comes in. I tried using Zotero and it opens up a lot of possibility but it’s just not quite worth loosing the great PP functionality – especially with the new Beta site and full-text search.

To PP product dev team: would it help if a few of us got together and drew up a rough outline of what a MVP API would look like with some use cases? It seems like there’s plenty of interest, and perhaps some clarification of exactly what we want might be useful rather than ā€œGIVE US APIā€ :rofl:

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Why is a public API not a high priority given high interest of your customers throughout the years?

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yes! building a core, extensible platform like Obsidian.md has to be the #1 priority after getting the new app* released. Allowing power users / developers to build creative and/or niche add-ons will boost development velocity many times over compared to what Paperpile dev team alone is capable of.

Regarding @vicente’s comment:

it is a matter of user demand

if you build it, they will come. Value Propositions in Business Ecosystems - Products, Marketplaces, Extensions - Boundaryless

*hopefully it’s been developed with this in mind already so there isn’t a ton of refactoring.

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I just want to add my voice to the chorus. With Obisidian & LLMs increasingly becoming a staple of the academic workflow (not to mention a myriad other possibilities that an API opens up) I feel like this should be a top priority for your dev team. You must be using an API for your phone apps, why not just expose some of that to the user side?

The only thing keeping me from moving to Zotero has been the pain of transferring my annotated pdfs along with their metadata.

If anyone has a solution for this, please let me know.

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What all my excuses, I am new to this platform and I am inserting myself into this thread.

  1. How do PaperPile compile your library? EndNote use an arbitrary reference number, Zotero an arbritary alphanumeric code, that is, there is a lot is arbitrary. In medicine, one could use PubMed ID pmid to indentify in an absolute manner a reference, that is, it is an ID independent of any personnal library.
  2. Is there an API that I could use for interfacing with, say, Python. I would provide Python with a list of, say, DOIs, Python would interrogate Paperpile, and Paperpile would provide the needed, say, in-text citations.
  3. How does PaperPile format the in-text and bibliography entries? EndNote can format and unformat in MS Word. Zotero says that the formatting is not reversible, and advise to safeguard the original manuscript. What about PaperPile and its MS Word addin? Is it reversible?
    Richard, attempting to write a to be shared medical encyclopedia entitle the Internist Browser :slight_smile:
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