Manuscript Tracker

Automatically sync your Google Doc comments/edits with a progress dashboard. Never lose track of advisor feedback again.

Try it now: manuscript-tracker.com

How it works:

1. Sign in with Google and paste your manuscript's Google Doc URL
2. Your advisor edits or comments on your manuscript in Google Docs
3. The tracker picks up the changes and shows them as a checklist
4. You address the feedback and revise — the system marks items as done
5. A progress bar shows how far each section is from completion
6. Share a read-only link with your advisors so they can see progress too

Features

• Zero setup — sign in with Google, paste your Doc URL, done
• Google Docs sync — automatically detects text edits and comments from advisors via Google Drive push notifications
• Section tracking — monitors 6 manuscript sections (Abstract, Introduction, Materials & Methods, Results, Discussion, Supplement)
• Paragraph-level annotations — shows exactly which paragraphs were edited or commented on, by whom, and when
• Comment tracking — advisor comments from Google Docs appear with the full comment text
• Mark as addressed — resolve annotations from the dashboard, or auto-resolve by editing the paragraph in Google Docs
• Progress bar — visual overview of manuscript completion
• Activity timeline — chronological feed of all edits, comments, and progress updates
• Progress logging — manually log your own progress with notes per section
• Multi-account support — configure additional email addresses and display names in settings
• Share with advisors — generate a read-only link (e.g., manuscript-tracker.com/share/yourname) so advisors can check progress without logging in

Tech Stack

• Frontend: React + Vite + Tailwind CSS (academic minimalist design)
• Backend: Cloudflare Workers (single worker serves API + static assets)
• Database: Cloudflare D1 (SQLite)
• Auth: Google OAuth 2.0 with encrypted refresh tokens
• APIs: Google Docs API + Google Drive API (push notifications)
• Hosting: Cloudflare Workers (free tier)

Self-Hosting

Want to run your own instance? Here's how.

Prerequisites

• Node.js v18+
• A Cloudflare account (free tier works)
• A Google Cloud project

1. Clone and install

git clone https://github.com/mancusolab/manuscript-tracker.git
cd manuscript-tracker
npm install
cd frontend && npm install && cd ..

2. Google Cloud setup

1. Go to Google Cloud Console
2. Create a new project (or select an existing one)
3. Enable Google Docs API and Google Drive API in APIs & Services > Library
4. Go to Google Auth Platform > Branding — fill in app name and support email
5. Go to Google Auth Platform > Audience — select External
6. Go to Google Auth Platform > Clients > Create Client
   • Application type: Web application
   • Authorized redirect URI: https://your-worker-url/auth/callback
7. Copy the Client ID and Client Secret

3. Cloudflare setup

npx wrangler login
npx wrangler d1 create manuscript-tracker-db

Copy wrangler.toml.example to wrangler.toml and fill in your values:

cp wrangler.toml.example wrangler.toml

Edit wrangler.toml:

• Set database_id from the D1 create output
• Set WORKER_URL to your worker URL
• Set GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID to your OAuth client ID

4. Set secrets and deploy

# Run database migrations
npx wrangler d1 execute manuscript-tracker-db --remote --file=migrations/0001_init.sql
npx wrangler d1 execute manuscript-tracker-db --remote --file=migrations/0002_multi_tenant.sql

# Set secrets
npx wrangler secret put GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET
openssl rand -base64 32 | npx wrangler secret put SESSION_SECRET
openssl rand -base64 32 | npx wrangler secret put TOKEN_ENCRYPTION_KEY

# Build and deploy
npm run deploy

Visit your worker URL, sign in with Google, and paste a Google Doc URL to start tracking.

Local Development

npx wrangler dev

This runs the worker locally with the frontend. Visit http://localhost:8787.

Customizing Sections

The default sections are: Abstract, Introduction, Materials & Methods, Results, Discussion, Supplement.

To customize, edit the section definitions in:

• workers/shared/doc-parser.ts — heading patterns for parsing
• workers/shared/db.ts — seedSectionsForUser function

License

MIT