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Literature Explorer Demo

This example describes a thin UI-facing API layer for a browser-based literature explorer demo.

The intended split is:

Python owns SQLite, BibTeX parsing, resolver calls, topic bootstrap, topic expansion, and provenance-aware storage.
A small app-facing adapter returns stable JSON payloads.
A browser-side JavaScript object calls that adapter and renders HTML5/CSS views.

The Python-side adapter now exists as:

from citegeist import BibliographyStore, LiteratureExplorerApi

store = BibliographyStore("library.sqlite3")
api = LiteratureExplorerApi(store)

The lightest runnable bridge is now the bundled standard-library HTTP server:

PYTHONPATH=src .venv/bin/python -m citegeist.app_server --db library.sqlite3 --host 127.0.0.1 --port 8765

or, after installation:

citegeist-explorer-server --db library.sqlite3 --host 127.0.0.1 --port 8765

UI-Facing Operations

The adapter exposes JSON-serializable methods suitable for a local web bridge:

capabilities()
search(query, limit=20, topic_slug=None)
show_entry(citation_key, include_provenance=False, include_conflicts=False, include_bibtex=False)
list_topics(limit=100, phrase_review_status=None)
get_topic(topic_slug, entry_limit=100)
bootstrap(...)
expand_topic(...)
extract_text(text, backend="heuristic")
verify_strings(values, context="", limit=5)
verify_bibtex(bibtex_text, context="", limit=5)
graph(seed_keys, relation_types=None, depth=1, review_status=None, missing_only=False)

The capabilities() payload also distinguishes between broader metadata/search sources and narrower graph-expansion sources:

metadata and topic seeding currently use crossref, datacite, openalex, and pubmed
topic graph expansion currently uses crossref and openalex

Browser Contract

A demo app can expose a browser object like:

window.citegeist = {
  search(query, opts) {},
  showEntry(citationKey, opts) {},
  listTopics(opts) {},
  getTopic(topicSlug, opts) {},
  bootstrap(opts) {},
  expandTopic(topicSlug, opts) {},
  extractText(text, opts) {},
  verifyStrings(values, opts) {},
  verifyBibtex(bibtexText, opts) {},
  graph(seedKeys, opts) {}
}

The bundled JS helper now supports a minimal fetch bridge:

import {
  createHttpBridge,
  createLiteratureExplorerClient,
} from "./literature-explorer.js";

const bridge = createHttpBridge("http://127.0.0.1:8765");
const citegeist = createLiteratureExplorerClient(bridge);

That browser object can be backed by:

a local HTTP bridge;
an Electron/Tauri preload bridge;
Pyodide-style in-process Python, if the dependency/runtime tradeoffs are acceptable.

The bundled lightweight choice is the local HTTP bridge because it adds no new runtime dependency beyond the Python standard library.

Minimal Run Path

Start the local explorer bridge:

PYTHONPATH=src .venv/bin/python -m citegeist.app_server --db library.sqlite3 --host 127.0.0.1 --port 8765

Serve the example directory statically from another terminal:

cd examples/literature-explorer
python3 -m http.server 8000

Open:

http://127.0.0.1:8000/index.html

The demo shell in index.html is intentionally narrow. It is meant to prove that the app-facing API is sufficient to drive topic bootstrap, topic expansion, search, extraction, verification, and entry inspection from a browser without introducing a frontend framework.

Demo Scope

This is sufficient to drive a demonstration app that can:

start from a topic phrase and preview bootstrap candidates;
commit a bounded topic corpus into the local store;
inspect topic members, confidence scores, and entry metadata;
preview or apply topic expansion;
inspect one entry with BibTeX/provenance details;
run rough-reference extraction and verification;
render local citation neighborhoods from graph() JSON payloads.

For a first demo, the strongest path is topic exploration rather than generic reference-manager behavior.

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