Project notes · 02
PaperBell: the whole paper-writing workflow inside Obsidian
Writing a paper means juggling several apps; PaperBell moves the whole flow, from finding and reading papers to writing, into Obsidian. I led its product and frontend, and moved its retrieval core to Rust.
Why it exists
Writing a paper is a fragmented job. Finding papers, reading them, taking notes, writing and formatting usually happen across several different apps. That is what PaperBell sets out to fix. If your notes already live in Obsidian, the whole academic workflow can live there too, from reading to writing in one place.
My part
I am PaperBell’s product and frontend lead. I designed and built the whole flow for the template products, from showcase to purchase to activation, with a TypeScript frontend and a Go licensing service, carrying it from purchase through to licensed use.
Search on a CPU
PaperBell’s retrieval core was originally written in Python. To lower the hardware it needs, I moved it to Rust, combined vector search with BM25, and optimized inference with AVX2, so it runs on an ordinary computer’s CPU without a graphics card.
The site is paperbell.cn.