bibiman

bibiman [-h|--help] [-v|--version] [-c path] [-l path] [--pdf-path path] [--light-terminal] [-C] [file|directory]...
bibiman format-citekeys [options] file

bibiman is a terminal user interface for managing BibLaTeX bibliographic databases as part of a terminal-based scientific workflow. Written in Rust, it provides fast, keyboard-driven interaction with .bib files.
The interface uses Vim-like keybindings for navigation: j/k or arrow keys to move between entries, Ctrl-d/Ctrl-u to jump by five entries, g/G to jump to the first or last entry, and h/l to select columns. Pressing ? opens a help popup with the full keybinding reference.
Entries can be searched with / or Ctrl-f for fuzzy search across all fields, or Alt-/ to search a specific field. Fuzzy matching is provided by the nucleo-matcher engine. Special prefixes modify matching behavior: ^ anchors to the beginning, $ anchors to the end, and ' forces literal matching. Pressing TAB switches between entry and keyword views, allowing filtering by keywords.
Pressing e opens the current entry in a terminal editor at the correct line. The editor is determined by the config file, then the VISUAL environment variable, then EDITOR, falling back to vi. Pressing y copies the citekey to the system clipboard, o opens an associated PDF, URL, or DOI link, and n creates or opens a note file linked to the entry. Entries can be added via DOI lookup with a.
Sorting is available by pressing s to cycle through author, title, and year columns, or S to restore the original file position order. A custom column can display additional metadata such as journal title, publisher, institution, series, or publication type.
Multiple .bib files can be loaded in a single session by passing several file arguments or a directory path. When a directory is given, bibiman recursively searches for all .bib files within it. PDF files are matched to entries either through the BibTeX file field or by matching the citekey against filenames in the configured PDF directory.
The format-citekeys subcommand provides batch citekey reformatting via the command line using a configurable pattern syntax, without launching the TUI.

-h, --help

Display help information and exit

Print the installed version and exit

Specify a custom configuration file location

Specify a custom log file location

Set the directory path for PDF file discovery during the session

Enable color scheme optimized for light terminal backgrounds

Load only files specified on the command line, ignoring any files defined in the configuration

Subcommand to reformat citekeys in a bibliography file using pattern syntax

The configuration file is located at $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/bibiman/bibiman.toml (typically ~/.config/bibiman/bibiman.toml).

$ bibfiles = ["/path/to/references.bib"]
editor = { command = "vim", args = ["-y"] }
pdf_opener = "xdg-open"
url_opener = "xdg-open"
pdf_path = "/path/to/pdfs"
note_path = "/path/to/notes"
note_extensions = ["md", "txt"]
custom_column = "pubtype"
clipboard = "wayland"```

The **editor** field accepts either a simple string or a table with **command** and **args** keys. The **custom_column** field controls what extra metadata appears in the entry list and can be set to **journaltitle**, **organization**, **institution**, **series**, **publisher**, or **pubtype**. The **clipboard** field selects the clipboard provider: **wayland**, **x-clip**, **x-sel**, **pasteboard**, **tmux**, or **win32-yank**.

Colors are configured in a **[colors]** section using ANSI color names, 256-color indices, or hex codes for elements such as **main_text_color**, **highlight_text_color**, **entry_color**, **keyword_color**, and **popup_bg_color**.

Citekey formatting rules are defined in a **[citekey_formatter]** section with options for **fields**, **ascii_only**, and **case**.

# CAVEATS

Citekeys cannot contain the special characters **/ | # * \ " ' ; !** as these interfere with note file creation and other operations. The editor must support the **+line** argument syntax for jumping to a specific line. Windows support for opening PDF files and URLs is untested. LaTeX macros are hidden in the display for readability but are preserved in the underlying .bib file.

# HISTORY

**bibiman** was created by **lukeflo** and first published to crates.io as version 0.7.0 in **November 2024**. The first official Codeberg release (v0.15.0) followed in **October 2025**. The project is written in Rust without AI-generated code, licensed under GPL-3.0-or-later, and hosted on Codeberg. As of early 2026, development remains active with version 0.19.3 released in January 2026 and over 376 commits in the repository.

# SEE ALSO

biber(1), bibtex(1), papis(1), latex(1)