LaTeX Report Writing

When to use

• User asks to write a report, summary, or technical document
• User asks to compile or fix a LaTeX file
• User wants a paper summary formatted as a document

Canonical Location

• Save report sources and PDFs under reports-repo/reports/
• Prefer filename format: YYYY-MM-DD-<topic>.tex and matching .pdf
• If directory is missing, create it

Workflow

Writing a new report

1. Clarify scope: what topic, how detailed, who's the audience?

2. Write the .tex file using \documentclass{article} with these sections:

   • \begin{abstract} — 3-5 sentence summary
   • \section{Introduction} — context, motivation, what this report covers
   • \section{Related Work} — key prior work, how it connects
   • \section{Analysis} or \section{Method} — the main content
   • \section{Discussion} — implications, open questions
   • \section{Conclusion} — key takeaways, next steps
   • \bibliography — use BibTeX for citations

3. Use proper LaTeX conventions:

   • \cite{} for references, not inline text citations
   • \ref{} for cross-references to figures/tables/sections
   • \begin{figure}, \begin{table} for floats
   • \usepackage{amsmath} for equations
   • \usepackage{graphicx} for figures
   • \usepackage{hyperref} for clickable references

4. Save to reports-repo/reports/ with a descriptive filename

5. Compile:

   pdflatex -interaction=nonstopmode -output-directory=<dir> <file>.tex
   bibtex <file>  # if bibliography used
   pdflatex -interaction=nonstopmode -output-directory=<dir> <file>.tex
   pdflatex -interaction=nonstopmode -output-directory=<dir> <file>.tex
   

   Run pdflatex twice (three times with bibtex) to resolve references.

6. From reports-repo, commit and push the .tex and .pdf files

   • Always commit and push so the report is accessible via GitHub
   • Do not commit generated reports to the main internbot repo unless user explicitly asks

7. Post to Slack: a brief plain-text summary (not the full LaTeX) with the direct GitHub link to the PDF

Fixing compilation errors

• Read the .log file for the actual error (not just the first line)
• Common issues: missing \end{}, unescaped _ or %, missing packages
• Fix the .tex and recompile

GitHub Repository

• Reports are stored in the reports-repo/ git subdir (separate repo with its own remote)
• To get the GitHub URL, run: git -C reports-repo remote get-url origin
• Direct PDF link format: <repo-url>/blob/main/reports/<filename>.pdf (strip any .git suffix and auth prefix)
• Credentials are already configured locally in the reports-repo

Formatting for Slack

• Don't paste LaTeX source into Slack
• Give a 2-3 sentence summary of what the report covers
• Always include the direct GitHub link to the PDF