Zotero MCP server

<!-- mcp-name: io.github.54yyyu/zotero-mcp -->

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

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: claudedesktopconfig.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 ZOTEROAPIKEY and ZOTEROLIBRARYID to write through the web API.

Shortened. The full README is on GitHub.