Previously, this existed as crixet.com [0]. At some point it used WASM for client-side compilation, and later transitioned to server-side rendering [1][2]. It now appears that there will be no option to disable AI [3]. I hope the core features remain available and won’t be artificially restricted. Compared to Overleaf, there were fewer service limitations: it was possible to compile more complex documents, share projects more freely, and even do so without registration.

On the other hand, Overleaf appears to be open source and at least partially self-hostable, so it’s possible some of these ideas or features will be adopted there over time. Alternatively, someone might eventually manage to move a more complete LaTeX toolchain into WASM.

[0] https://crixet.com

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Crixet/comments/1ptj9k9/comment/nvh...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42009254

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46394937

Check out MonsterWriter if you are concerned about the recent acquisition of this.

It also offers LaTeX workspaces

see video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feWZByHoViw

Very unfortunately named. OpenAI probably (and likely correctly) estimated that 13 years is enough time after the Snowden leaks to use "prism" for a product but, for me, the word is permanently tainted.

This seems like a very basic overleaf alternative with few of its features, plus a shallow ChatGPT wrapper. Certainly can’t compete with using VS Code or TeXstudio locally, collaborating through GitHub, and getting AI assistance from Claude Code or Codex.

> Introducing Prism Accelerating science writing and collaboration with AI.

I thought this was introduced by the NSA some time ago.

"Accelerating science writing and collaboration with AI"

Uhm ... no.

I think we need to put an end to AI as it is currently used (not all of it but most of it).

Very underwhelming.

Was this not already possible in the web ui or through a vscode-like editor?

The quality and usefulness of it aside, the primary question is: are they still collecting chats for training data? If so, it limits how comfortable, and sometimes even permitted, people would with working on their yet-to-be-public work using this tool.

What's the goal here?

There was an idea of OpenAI charging commission or royalties on new discoveries.

What kind of researcher wants to potentially lose, or get caught up in legal issues because of a free ChatGPT wrapper, or am I missing something?

That's is probably one good usage of LLMs. LaTeX was a relief to deal with after using LLM. I have been using LaTeX for years before but it was not any easy. Aside of making LLM write the text, it is very good grammar and typo checker.

Even on overleaf and browser default spell checker, my Thesis feedback contained a few typos from my Advisor each time I sent him for review.

BTW: Overleaf added LLM integration which help solving LaTeX errors but you pay for it separately. But I feel like overleaf with their good docs on LaTeX something positive for science and hope they manage to adapt with this nee competition.

With a tool like this, you could imagine an end-to-end service for restoring and modernizing old scientific books and papers: digitization, cleanup, LaTeX reformatting, collaborative or volunteer-driven workflows, OCR (like Mathpix), and side-by-side comparison with the original. That would be useful.

From my perspective as a journal editor and a reviewer these kinds of tools cause many more problems than they actually solve. They make the 'barrier to entry' for submitting vibed semi-plausible journal articles much lower, which I understand some may see as a benefit. The drawback is that scientific editors and reviewers provide those services for free, as a community benefit. One example was a submission their undergraduate affiliation (in accounting) to submit a paper on cosmology, entirely vibe-coded and vibe-written. This just wastes our (already stretched) time. A significant fraction of submissions are now vibe-written and come from folks who are looking to 'boost' their CV (even having a 'submitted' publication is seen as a benefit), which is really not the point of these journals at all.

I'm not sure I'm convinced of the benefit of lowering the barrier to entry to scientific publishing. The hard part always has been, and always will be, understanding the research context (what's been published before) and producing novel and interesting work (the underlying research). Connecting this together in a paper is indeed a challenge, and a skill that must be developed, but is really a minimal part of the process.

in the end we're going to end up with papers written by AI, proofread by AI .....summarized for readers by AI. I think this is just for them to remain relevant and be seen as still pushing something out