Recover a forgotten passage
Find the paper where I highlighted an objection to this method. Quote the passage with its page.
Result to check
Paper title · your highlight or comment · retrieved quotation · page to verify
Try a first evidence questionOpen-source · Zotero MCP server
Find the evidence you saved in Zotero.
Ask questions about your papers and notes in Claude or ChatGPT. Retrieve passages with page references, compare evidence, and turn your annotations into cited notes.
MIT-licensedFree local installOptional hosted plans
Works with
- Claude Desktop
- Claude Code
- ChatGPT
- Cursor
- VS Code
- Zed
- Codex
- Gemini CLI
“I am able to talk to my Zotero library and notes and query things that I would have otherwise been unable to do. It’s made years of research trickling in in bits and pieces become part of a larger whole.”
Connect your library
Choose where you want to work.
Hosted: nothing to install
Use your synced Zotero library in Claude or ChatGPT. Zoteus maintains the server and provides email support. Individual starts at €7/month or €69/year.
You need access to custom connectors in your AI account. Hosted access cannot read files that exist only on your computer or in your WebDAV storage.
Hosted plans, from €7/monthFree: run on your computer
Connect Claude Desktop to the Zotero app and read your local PDFs. The open-source software is free, with the same tools and community support.
Keep Zotero running and enable its local API. Keyword search works without embeddings; search by meaning needs extra setup. Retrieved text is still sent to your chosen AI service.
Cursor and other clientsConnected already? Find and verify your first passage.
Research workflows
From a question to evidence you can check.
These example prompts show what to ask and how to review the result. The recording above shows a real library session. The outputs below are illustrative formats, not findings from your library.
Compare several papers
Compare how these five papers support my question. Read the relevant passages first and mark missing evidence.
Result to check
Study · finding · quotation · page · supported, contradicted, or unverified
Build an evidence tableTurn annotations into a note
Find my objections and decisions about this topic. Draft a cited note and show it to me before saving.
Result to check
Your comment · source passage · cited synthesis · draft for your review
Work with your annotationsA real reference does not guarantee a correct AI conclusion. Open the source passage, check its context, and label synthesis based only on abstracts.
Install
Prefer a terminal? Start locally.
Reads work key-free against the running desktop app, and so do the personal-library writes that go through it. Add a Zotero API key for sync, group libraries, and writes when the app is closed. Step-by-step for Claude Desktop, claude.ai, ChatGPT, Claude Code and Cursor.
Claude Code
Any client (universal)
Claude Desktop
Download the .mcpb for your system from the latest release and double-click it.
What it does
Search, cite, add, and write back to your own library.
- Find a paper or a passage
- Search titles, abstracts, notes and annotations. Search by meaning needs an active embedding provider; PDF-body indexing is opt-in. Read the matched passage to verify its page and context.
- zotero_semantic_search · zotero_index · zotero_get_fulltext
- Citations from your own library
- Zoteus reads the references in your Zotero library and formats them with citeproc-js in any CSL style.
- zotero_bibliography · zotero_format_bibliography · zotero_styles
- Add by identifier
- Give it a DOI or arXiv id and it fetches the metadata and files the item. ISBN, PMID and URLs too, through a Zotero translation-server.
- zotero_import
- Review changes to your library
- Preview a metadata edit before applying it. Trash can be restored; arbitrary metadata changes do not have automatic undo.
- zotero_create_items · zotero_update_item · zotero_trash_items
- Runs on your machine
- The free local route reads from your running Zotero app. You can install an on-device embedding model. Retrieved excerpts still go to the AI service you choose.
- Zotero local API, 127.0.0.1:23119
- Scholarly-context graph
- Follow references and citing works through OpenAlex and Crossref. Zoteus also ships MCP Resources, Prompts, and the code-execution pattern for agent use.
- zotero_scholar
Pricing
Free to self-host. Hosted for you or your lab.
Self-hosting stays free, with every feature, permanently. The hosted plans sell hosting, seats and support, never features.
Self-hosted
Free
Forever
MIT-licensed. Run it yourself.
Unlimited
Individual
€69/year
or €7/month
One researcher, nothing to run.
1 person
Lab
€99/month
or €990/year, two months free
Your whole group, on your shared Zotero group library.
Up to 10 seats
Department
€299/month
or €2,990/year
A faculty, library or institute.
Up to 50 seats
Connect your Zotero library.
Choose hosted access or a free local install, then verify one passage from a paper you know.