Zotero MCP: Chat with your Research Library—Local or Web—in Claude, ChatGPT, and more.

September 15, 2026 · View on GitHub

Zotero MCP connects your Zotero research library with ChatGPT, Claude, and other AI assistants (e.g., Cherry Studio, Chorus, Cursor) via the Model Context Protocol. Search your library, read and annotate papers, add and organize items, and find research by meaning.

AI agents: read docs/for-agents.md first. It covers which route to use, setup, and the commands in one place.

✨ What it does

🔍 Search by title, author, tag, collection, full text, or meaning (semantic search with local, OpenAI, Gemini, or Ollama embeddings)
📚 Read metadata, BibTeX, full text, and page ranges of PDFs, with page images where text extraction garbles math, figures, and tables
📝 Annotate: highlights and area boxes placed on the exact words, figure, table, or equation; notes; PDF annotation extraction
✏️ Write: add papers by DOI, URL, ISBN, BibTeX, or file (with open-access PDFs), manage collections and tags, merge duplicates
💻 Local or web: in local mode reads come straight from zotero.sqlite; writes go to the running Zotero 10+ or through the web API
🪶 Two ways in: an MCP server for chat apps, or zotero-cli plus an agent skill for coding agents
📊 Scite citation tallies and retraction alerts (optional)

🚀 Quick start

1. Install (Python 3.10+):

uv tool install zotero-mcp-server     # or: pip install zotero-mcp-server

New to the command line? Try the community-built Zotero MCP Setup: a macOS GUI installer, one-click scripts for Mac and Windows, and a step-by-step guide.

2. Enable Zotero's local API: in Zotero 7+, open Settings → Advanced and tick Allow other applications on this computer to communicate with Zotero.

3. Connect your assistant:

zotero-mcp setup      # auto-configures Claude Desktop

or add the server by hand (Claude Desktop: claude_desktop_config.json; Claude Code: ~/.claude.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "zotero": {
      "command": "zotero-mcp",
      "env": { "ZOTERO_LOCAL": "true" }
    }
  }
}

4. Writes (optional): on Zotero 10+, run zotero-mcp authorize-local once and choose Always Allow. On older Zotero, add ZOTERO_API_KEY and ZOTERO_LIBRARY_ID to write through the web API.

Then ask things like "Find papers in my library on attention mechanisms", "Summarize the key findings of this paper", or "Highlight the main claims of this PDF".

ChatGPT, Cherry Studio, Chorus, Autohand, and other clients: see Getting started.

Optional extras

The base install covers search, reading, annotations, and writes. Heavier features are extras:

Extra	What it adds	Install command
`semantic`	Semantic search via ChromaDB, sentence-transformers, OpenAI/Gemini embeddings	`pip install "zotero-mcp-server[semantic]"`
`pdf`	PDF outlines, page layout and page images (PyMuPDF), EPUB annotations	`pip install "zotero-mcp-server[pdf]"`
`scite`	Scite citation tallies and retraction alerts (no account needed)	`pip install "zotero-mcp-server[scite]"`
`all`	Everything above	`pip install "zotero-mcp-server[all]"`

Update any time with zotero-mcp update.

🪶 MCP server or agent skill?

If your agent has a shell (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Windsurf, Gemini CLI, Amp, OpenCode …), one command teaches it to drive zotero-cli:

zotero-mcp install-skill

An MCP server sends every tool's schema on every request, before you type anything. The skill costs 98 tokens until the agent decides it is relevant:

Route	In context	Paid
MCP server, default profile (38 tools)	13,448	every request
Agent skill, frontmatter only	98	always
Agent skill, body loaded	1,368	when it fires

Use the MCP server when your client speaks MCP but has no shell (Claude Desktop, ChatGPT); use the skill when it has a shell. Both share one config. Details: CLI and agent skill.

📖 Documentation

Guide	What's in it
Getting started	Connecting Claude Desktop and Claude Code, ChatGPT, Cherry Studio, Chorus, Autohand, and other MCP clients
Configuration	Environment variables, local writes, web and hybrid modes, the SQLite read backend, global search, text extraction, command-line options
Semantic search	Embedding models, building and updating the index
Tools	Every MCP tool, tool groups (`ZOTERO_MCP_TOOLSETS`), related items, PDF annotation extraction
CLI and agent skill	`zotero-cli` command reference, `--json` output, `install-skill`
Docker	Container images and runtime modes
Troubleshooting	Common problems and fixes
For AI agents	One guide for an agent setting up or using Zotero MCP

Website: stevenyuyy.com/zotero-mcp · Changelog

🤝 Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. Run the tests with uv run pytest tests/. A live integration test plan, meant to be run by Claude against a real library, is in docs/integration-test-plan.md.

☕ Support

Zotero MCP is free and MIT-licensed.

If it saves you or your lab time, sponsoring helps cover the unglamorous parts: Windows and WSL2 edge cases, Zotero schema changes, group-library support, and the embedding/search infrastructure.