zotero

The Zotero MCP integration provides a built-in MCP server inside the Zotero plugin, enabling AI clients to interact with your local Zotero library over the Streamable HTTP protocol. The server supports powerful capabilities such as full-text search across your library, filtering by tags, creators, year and more, retrieving detailed reference metadata, and locating references by identifiers like DOI and ISBN. It also offers semantic search using embeddings (OpenAI or Ollama), and handles PDF processing, annotation retrieval, and collection-based querying. To use it, install the Zotero MCP plugin, enable the integrated server in the plugin preferences, and generate a client configuration from Zotero which you then load into your AI client (e.g., Claude Desktop, Cherry Studio, Cursor IDE, or other Streamable HTTP clients).

Once configured, the AI client communicates with the local Zotero MCP server via the provided endpoint (for example http://127.0.0.1:23120/mcp). The client configuration includes the mcpServers map, typically with a zotero entry that uses the streamable_http transport. This setup allows real-time, bidirectional querying of your Zotero library for searches, metadata retrieval, and citation tasks directly from your AI assistant.

Prerequisites:

• Zotero 7.0 or higher
• Node.js 18.0 or higher
• npm or yarn
• Git

Step-by-step installation:

1. Clone the repository git clone https://github.com/cookjohn/zotero-mcp.git cd zotero-mcp

2. Install the plugin development dependencies cd zotero-mcp-plugin npm install

3. Build the plugin for development npm run build

4. Run development server / load plugin in Zotero

   • For development with auto-reload: npm run start
   • Or, build and load the generated .xpi into Zotero via Tools -> Add-ons

5. Configure the integrated MCP server

   • Open Zotero -> Preferences -> Zotero MCP Plugin
   • Enable Server
   • Ensure Port is set to 23120 (default) and use the built-in client configuration generator to obtain settings for your AI client

Note: The MCP server in this setup is integrated into the Zotero plugin, so there is no separate standalone server process to run outside Zotero.

• The MCP server is local-only to protect your Zotero data; configuration uses the Streamable HTTP protocol for real-time bidirectional communication.
• Default port is 23120; you can change it in the plugin preferences if needed, and update your client configuration accordingly.
• The generated client configuration will include a zotero mcpServers entry with transport set to streamable_http and the appropriate URL.
• If you encounter issues, ensure Zotero is running, the plugin is enabled, and the integrated server is started in the plugin preferences. Check firewall settings to allow localhost connections on the configured port.
• This integration supports advanced search, semantic search, filtering, PDF handling, and annotation retrieval to streamline AI-assisted literature review and citation tasks.