format-references-zotero

format-references-zotero is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from aipoch/medical-research-skills. It costs 74 tokens per session (1,774 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A reference-formatting tool that converts PMID markers in Markdown into Word citations linked to Zotero. Zotero is an application for collecting, organizing, and formatting research references.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to move PMID-tagged Markdown manuscripts into Word with Zotero-managed citations and bibliographies.
Why use it?
It preserves editable Zotero citation fields, so the bibliography and citation style can be refreshed later in Word. This avoids reformatting citations by hand.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Use it to move PMID-tagged Markdown manuscripts into Word with Zotero-managed citations and bibliographies.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/aipoch/medical-research-skills/format-references-zotero
About the project

Medical Research Agent Skills is a library of agent instructions for medical and biomedical research, covering evidence analysis, study protocol design, data analysis, and academic writing. Researchers use it to guide compatible coding agents through common scientific workflows. The catalogue contains many of the library's skills and commands.

aipoch/medical-research-skills · 1,860 stars · on GitHub · aipoch.com

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add aipoch/medical-research-skills --skill format-references-zotero
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/aipoch/medical-research-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for format-references-zotero

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/aipoch/medical-research-skills/format-references-zotero/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/aipoch/medical-research-skills/format-references-zotero)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/aipoch/medical-research-skills/format-references-zotero"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/aipoch/medical-research-skills/format-references-zotero/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for format-references-zotero

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/aipoch/medical-research-skills/format-references-zotero"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/aipoch/medical-research-skills/format-references-zotero.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 74 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,774 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
SkillSpector: 1 finding, up to low

These are SkillSpector’s own severities. On a checked sample its high-severity flags on skills were ~96% false positives — a documented command, a public API, a “never do X” rule — so we show them as a caution to read, not a verdict. Why →

  • low Excessive Agency · line 147
    Skill's behavior or capabilities extend beyond its stated purpose. Scope creep allows an agent to perform actions unrelated to its documented functionality, increasing the attack surface.
    Fix: Limit the skill's scope to its documented purpose. Remove instructions that enable the agent to perform actions outside its stated functionality.
How audits are shown
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00074 $0.01774
Opus 5 $0.00037 $0.00887
Sonnet 5 $0.00015 $0.00355
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00177

Measured 9d ago against content hash bd445ae95229, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

format-references-zotero scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 9d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 3 executable files (scripts/check_env.py, scripts/process_references.py, scripts/search_styles.py), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

scientific-skills/Academic Writing/format-references-zotero/SKILL.md · 179 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 179 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Source: https://github.com/aipoch/medical-research-skills

Medical Literature Reference Formatter — Zotero Edition

Converts [PMID: xxxx] markers directly to native Word Zotero field codes, maintaining full editability: users can switch citation styles in Zotero at any time and Refresh once in Word to update the entire document.

Workflow

Step 0 — Check Environment (first run or on error)

python "<skill_dir>/scripts/check_env.py"

Checks: Python, python-docx, Pandoc, PubMed API, Zotero installation and running status.

If it reports .ris not associated with Zotero, ask the user if they want to fix it. If they agree, run:

python "<skill_dir>/scripts/check_env.py" --fix-ris

Step 1 — Confirm Target File

Ask when user has not provided a full path. Desktop path: C:\Users\<username>\Desktop\<filename>.md

Step 2 — Confirm Citation Style

Default is nature. If the user specifies another style (e.g., Vancouver, Elsevier, APA), first confirm it is installed:

python "<skill_dir>/scripts/search_styles.py" <keyword>          # search available styles
python "<skill_dir>/scripts/search_styles.py" --install <style-id>  # download and install

Styles are automatically installed to Zotero's local styles directory (located via prefs.js, cross-platform).

Step 3 — Run Processing Script

python "<skill_dir>/scripts/process_references.py" "<absolute_path>" [--style <style-id>]

Default style is nature; you can specify any installed style ID:

python "<skill_dir>/scripts/process_references.py" "paper.md" --style elsevier-harvard
python "<skill_dir>/scripts/process_references.py" "paper.md" --style vancouver

Script completes: PMID extraction → PubMed metadata → generate .docx with Zotero fields (including ZOTERO_PREF) → generate .ris → auto-open.

Step 3.5 — Change Style / Force Refresh Cache

python "<skill_dir>/scripts/process_references.py" "paper.md" --style vancouver
python "<skill_dir>/scripts/process_references.py" "paper.md" --force-refresh   # clear cache, re-fetch from PubMed

Read the full file on GitHub · 179 lines

Files

What ships with it

5 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 9d ago First seen · 179 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A bd445ae95229

Subscribe to this mod's changes

format-references-zotero is a skill published in the GitHub repository aipoch/medical-research-skills (1,860 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 74 tokens to every session and 1,774 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-09-03.

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