PDF to Source-Anchored Markdown for Papers

Turn two-column papers in Zotero into one-column text that jumps back to the source

Problem

Reading two-column PDFs means going back to the top after every left column, formulas and tables are unreadable in small windows, and copy-paste comes out garbled; verifying a number requires paging through the PDF again. Existing PDF-to-Markdown tools produce two disconnected files, so highlights and notes no longer match and you cannot confirm the source before citing.

Solution

A Zotero extension: right-click a paper to get a single-column continuous text view with reading order restored, formulas, tables, images, citations and footnotes preserved and headers/footers hidden; every paragraph, formula, table and image keeps its page and region mapping so "view in PDF" jumps back to the exact spot, and highlights sync back to Zotero.

Users

Grad students, researchers, and engineers or product researchers who read many papers closely

MVP

Local Zotero 7+ extension only; two-column reflow with formula/table preservation; paragraph-level page mapping and jump-back; highlight sync with Zotero annotations; skip cloud sync, team collaboration and non-PDF formats

Revenue

Open-source free tier plus paid Pro (batch conversion, finer mapping, custom styles); institutional team licenses.

Why now

LLMs have exploded paper reading and summarization, but source-traceable anchoring is still missing; the Zotero add-on ecosystem is mature and a solo developer can ship a WebExtension quickly.