About
Zotero MCP Server connects your Zotero research library with AI assistants including Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, Cherry Studio, and Chorus via the Model Context Protocol. It enables intelligent searching, reading, and management of academic papers, PDFs, and research materials directly within your AI conversations. Key features of Zotero MCP Server: - **AI-Powered Semantic Search**: Vector-based similarity search across your entire research library with support for local embedding models, OpenAI, and Gemini embeddings. - **Document Access & Analysis**: Retrieve detailed metadata, full text content, and citations in markdown or BibTeX format, with lookup by BetterBibTeX citation key. - **PDF Annotation Extraction**: Extract and search PDF annotations with page numbers, access Zotero's native annotations, and retrieve PDF table of contents. - **Research Library Management**: Add papers by DOI or URL (arXiv, DOI links, webpages), create collections, batch-update tags, and find/merge duplicate items. - **Flexible Access Modes**: Local mode for offline access without API keys, or web API mode with hybrid support for local reads with cloud writes. - **Open-Access PDF Cascade**: Automatically fetches open-access PDFs from Unpaywall, arXiv, Semantic Scholar, and PubMed Central when adding papers.
README
Zotero MCP: Chat with your Research Library—Local or Web—in Claude, ChatGPT, and more.
Zotero MCP seamlessly connects your Zotero research library with ChatGPT, Claude, and other AI assistants (e.g., Cherry Studio, Chorus, Cursor) via the Model Context Protocol. Review papers, get summaries, analyze citations, extract PDF annotations, and more!
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✨ Features
🧠 AI-Powered Semantic Search
[semantic] extra)🔍 Search Your Library
📚 Access Your Content
📝 Work with Annotations
[pdf] extra)✏️ Write Operations
🌐 Flexible Access Methods
🚀 Quick Install
Default Installation (core tools only)
The base install is lightweight — it includes search, metadata retrieval, annotations, and write operations. No ML/AI dependencies are pulled in.
#### Installing via uv (recommended)
uv tool install zotero-mcp-server
zotero-mcp setup # Auto-configure (Claude Desktop supported)
#### Installing via pip
pip install zotero-mcp-server
zotero-mcp setup # Auto-configure (Claude Desktop supported)
#### Installing via pipx
pipx install zotero-mcp-server
zotero-mcp setup # Auto-configure (Claude Desktop supported)
Optional Extras
Heavy ML/PDF dependencies are separated into optional extras so the base install stays fast and small:
| Extra | What it adds | Install command |
|-------|-------------|-----------------|
| semantic | Semantic search via ChromaDB, sentence-transformers, OpenAI/Gemini embeddings | pip install "zotero-mcp-server[semantic]" |
| pdf | PDF outline extraction (PyMuPDF) and EPUB annotation support | pip install "zotero-mcp-server[pdf]" |
| all | Everything above | pip install "zotero-mcp-server[all]" |
For example, with uv:
uv tool install "zotero-mcp-server[all]" # Full install with all features
uv tool install "zotero-mcp-server[semantic]" # Just semantic search
If you only need basic library access (search, read, annotate, write), the default install with no extras is all you need.
#### Updating Your Installation
Keep zotero-mcp up to date with the smart update command:
# Check for updates
zotero-mcp update --check-onlyUpdate to latest version (preserves all configurations)
zotero-mcp update
🧠 Semantic Search
Zotero MCP now includes powerful AI-powered semantic search capabilities that let you find research based on concepts and meaning, not just keywords.
Setup Semantic Search
During setup or separately, configure
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