AI Writing Tools for Zettlr?

hendrik · 2024-12-31T15:30:00+00:00

Hello everyone, I would like to start a discussion regarding AI integration into Zettlr. This has no priority right now, because (a) the community hasn't ye...

mononym

professed

Finally, I made a second script which converts and reads an input from selected text. The script is called with a custom shortcut Ctrl+Shift+R after having selected the part to be read.

#!/bin/bash

wl-paste --primary | pandoc --standalone --from markdown --to plain --no-highlight | piper --model ~/apps/Speak/en_GB-cori-high.onnx --output_file /tmp/tts-output.wav; vlc /tmp/tts-output.wav

N.B.: I'm on Wayland and had to install wl-clipboard, the --primary gets the selected text (primary buffer); uv tool did actually install piper to ~/.local/bin/piper.

professed

mononym This looks super cool. I spend most of my time on Xorg because of some software compatibility considerations, so I'll have to look into an Xorg equivalent. Thank you for this, looks super handy.

professed

mononym Used your script for reading input from selected text. Was able to simply substitute xsel for wl-paste.

Also, as another quality of life improvement, I added the --one-instance flag to vlc in all my scripts, so it doesn't spawn a new instance of the player every time I hit the hotkey or do an audio export.

denverhandy

As a writer that left a career of IT, the latter years managing teams, I was forced out voluntarily for not embracing Ai. Not for lack of merit but was disgusted with the deception and the meritocracy it manifested and lack of guardrails. I'm writing a fiction novel and have no intention of using Ai shortcuts in my work. I could not agree more with sensologica in his perception & motivation. Best of luck gentlemen.

sensologica

hendrik

I feel validated by opening up this discussion instead of just dumping AI stuff into the app without thinking; here's a nice video that summarizes my feelings towards the AI slop heading our way. (But please ignore the sponsor segment at the end, the video sponsor is a really, really disturbing company.)

In general, I found his discussion of email summaries in Outlook interesting, because here's why I personally like Apple's stance towards AI. The email summaries in my mailbox are entirely automatic, the computer just produces them, and then even transactional emails of the "someone has shared something with you" type actually benefit from it. That is because the summaries usually mean I don't even have to open the email at all. I generally feel that Apple has a better vision for AI than MS or any other company, and that's what I'm hoping to achieve with any Zettlr AI integration, if that ever comes.

UsmanAkram

hendrik
Great points! I think AI integration into Zettlr could open up powerful workflows, especially for researchers and writers.

Some ideas that come to mind:

Inline rewriting & tone control → perfect for refining drafts quickly.

Summarization tools → very useful for parsing older notes or long research documents.

Abstract generation → even if only a rough draft, it makes starting much easier.

I also agree with you on local-first AI like Ollama. Privacy and data security matter a lot for academics, so this is the right direction.

Another thought: it would be great if Zettlr allowed custom prompt templates (e.g “Summarize into an academic abstract” vs. “Simplify for a blog”). That way, users can shape AI to their specific workflows.

By the way, if you’re interested in automation + AI workflow solutions, check this out: Zaytrics

Excited to see how this evolves!

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