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Draft a manuscript with citations and figures

Uses

Section titled “Uses”

By the end of this guide you will have a single Titan project containing a short LaTeX manuscript, a .bib file with two references, one figure, and a compiled PDF preview that updates when you save. The whole loop lives in one browser tab.

If you are coming from Overleaf, the experience will feel familiar. The differences worth knowing: the References panel lives in the left sidebar (not a dialog), and figures are added with normal \includegraphics syntax pointing at files in the project’s file tree.

Prerequisites

Section titled “Prerequisites”
  • A Chromium-based browser (Chrome, Edge, Arc). Firefox works for most things but cannot open a local folder for the alternative path below.
  • About fifteen minutes.
  • No prior LaTeX projects. Step 1 creates one from a preset.

Worked example

Section titled “Worked example”

This guide walks through a manuscript with two sections (Introduction, Method), two cited references, and one figure. The full source files are inline below. Copy them as you go.

[Asset: annotated screenshot] One screenshot of the References panel with the citation picker mid-insertion, the LaTeX source in the editor area, and the PDF preview on the right. Asset name: manuscript-citations-flow.png. Replaces no existing placeholders.

Steps

Section titled “Steps”

1. Create the project

Section titled “1. Create the project”
  1. From the dashboard, click New Project.
  2. Pick the LaTeX preset and click Let’s start.

You should see a new workspace with a main.tex file open and a blank PDF preview pane.

2. Replace the starter content

Section titled “2. Replace the starter content”

Open main.tex and replace the contents with:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\title{A Short Manuscript}
\author{You}
\begin{document}
\maketitle


\section{Introduction}
Recent work has explored how local-first tools change collaborative writing
\cite{birrell2023localfirst}. Our setup follows a similar approach
\cite{kleppmann2019crdts}.


\section{Method}
We produced this manuscript inside a single browser tab.
See Figure~\ref{fig:overview} for the editor layout.


\begin{figure}[h]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.6\textwidth]{figures/overview.png}
\caption{The workspace shell.}
\label{fig:overview}
\end{figure}


\bibliographystyle{plain}
\bibliography{refs}
\end{document}

Save (Cmd/Ctrl-S). The preview pane should attempt a compile and show errors — that is expected at this stage. We have not yet created refs.bib or figures/overview.png.

3. Create the bibliography file

Section titled “3. Create the bibliography file”
  1. Open the left sidebar and click the References tab.
  2. In the References panel header, click Create new.bib file….
  3. Name it refs.bib and confirm.

The new file appears in the file tree, and the References panel’s default bib selector switches to refs.bib. Open refs.bib from the file tree and paste:

@article{birrell2023localfirst,
  author = {Birrell, A.},
  title = {Local-First Software: A Working Definition},
  journal = {Communications of the ACM},
  year = {2023},
  volume = {66},
  number = {3}
}


@article{kleppmann2019crdts,
  author = {Kleppmann, M. and Beresford, A.},
  title = {A Conflict-Free Replicated JSON Datatype},
  journal = {IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems},
  year = {2019},
  volume = {28},
  number = {10}
}

Save. The keys (birrell2023localfirst, kleppmann2019crdts) match the \cite{} calls in main.tex.

4. Add the figure

Section titled “4. Add the figure”

The manuscript references figures/overview.png but the project does not have it yet. Two options:

  • Use a placeholder image. Right-click in the file tree, choose New Folder, name it figures. Drag any small PNG from your computer into it and rename to overview.png.
  • Skip the figure for now. Comment out the \begin{figure} block in main.tex and continue. Add it later.

For this guide, use a placeholder so the compile is clean.

5. Compile

Section titled “5. Compile”

Open main.tex. In the preview toolbar, the compile mode menu (Auto, On Save, Manual) controls when compile runs.

  1. Set compile mode to On Save.
  2. Save the file.

You should see the preview update to a PDF with a title, an author line, two numbered sections, two inline citations rendered as [1]-style markers, a captioned figure, and a numbered bibliography at the end.

If the Problems panel at the bottom shows errors, click each problem to jump to the source line.

6. Insert one more citation through the picker (optional)

Section titled “6. Insert one more citation through the picker (optional)”

Now that the workflow is working, try the References-panel insertion flow rather than typing \cite{} by hand:

  1. Put the cursor in main.tex at the end of the Introduction section.
  2. In the References panel, find one of your two entries and click Insert citation.
  3. Save. The preview updates.

This is the flow you will use for real manuscripts where you have a long bibliography and do not want to memorise keys.

Verification

Section titled “Verification”

You have built the manuscript correctly if all of these are true at the end:

  • The preview shows a compiled PDF with a title, two sections, two citations, a captioned figure, and a numbered bibliography.
  • The Problems panel is empty for main.tex (or only contains warnings, not errors).
  • Reopening the project after a refresh shows the same compiled state.

Variations

Section titled “Variations”
  • Use Typst instead of LaTeX. Pick the Typst preset in step 1. Citation insertion from the References panel works for .typ files as well. Replace the LaTeX-specific syntax in step 2 with the Typst equivalent.
  • Use DOCX instead. Create the project from the DOCX preset. The DOCX editor has its own toolbar-based citation picker (Insert citation) and a Citation style control. See DOCX workflow.
  • Use Zotero as the reference source. Connect Zotero from the References panel’s provider tabs and pick entries from your library instead of writing refs.bib by hand.

If something goes wrong

Section titled “If something goes wrong”
  • The preview shows “Compilation Failed” and nothing else. Click the Output tab in the bottom panel to read the raw log. The error is almost always a typo in main.tex or a missing file (figures/overview.png if you did not add the placeholder).
  • Citations render as [?] markers. The keys in \cite{} do not match the keys in refs.bib. Open refs.bib and check the leading word of each entry; that is the key.
  • The References panel says no .bib file is selected. Use the default bib selector at the top of the panel to point at refs.bib. The selection persists per project.
  • The figure does not appear. Confirm the file is at figures/overview.png (lowercase, exact name) and that the \includegraphics path matches. LaTeX is case-sensitive.
  • You compile but the bibliography stays empty. Re-run compile a second time. LaTeX needs two passes to resolve the bibliography on a fresh project.
Section titled “Read next”