pyzotero

pyzotero is a skill for Claude Code from crazymsn/academic-skills. It costs 85 tokens per session (1,064 once invoked), scanned A, a copy of pyzotero, MIT.

A Python client for Zotero, a reference manager used to collect and organize research papers and citations. It connects to Zotero libraries through its web API.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to search, read, create, update, tag, organize, upload, and export bibliographic references and their attachments.
Why use it?
It allows scripts to manage references and attachments in bulk instead of editing a library one item at a time.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: allowed-tools in frontmatter.

Good fit Use it to search, read, create, update, tag, organize, upload, and export bibliographic references and their attachments.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/crazymsn/academic-skills/pyzotero
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 crazymsn/academic-skills --skill pyzotero
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/crazymsn/academic-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

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 pyzotero

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/crazymsn/academic-skills/pyzotero/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/crazymsn/academic-skills/pyzotero)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/crazymsn/academic-skills/pyzotero"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/crazymsn/academic-skills/pyzotero/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 pyzotero

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/crazymsn/academic-skills/pyzotero"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/crazymsn/academic-skills/pyzotero.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 85 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,064 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.
Origin 97% copy Near-identical to another mod 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 $0.00085 $0.01064
Opus 5 $0.00043 $0.00532
Sonnet 5 $0.00017 $0.00213
Haiku 4.5 $0.00009 $0.00106

Measured 9d ago against content hash a2ea54e97fa8, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

pyzotero 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.

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.

Origin

This is a copy

97% identical to pyzotero — 2 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

academic-skills/pyzotero/SKILL.md · 110 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 110 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Pyzotero

Pyzotero is a Python wrapper for the Zotero API v3. Use it to programmatically manage Zotero libraries: read items and collections, create and update references, upload attachments, manage tags, and export citations.

Authentication Setup

Required credentials — get from https://www.zotero.org/settings/keys:

Store credentials in environment variables or a .env file:

ZOTERO_LIBRARY_ID=your_user_id
ZOTERO_API_KEY=your_api_key
ZOTERO_LIBRARY_TYPE=user  # or "group"

See references/authentication.md for full setup details.

Installation

uv add pyzotero
# or with CLI support:
uv add "pyzotero[cli]"

Quick Start

from pyzotero import Zotero

zot = Zotero(library_id='123456', library_type='user', api_key='ABC1234XYZ')

# Retrieve top-level items (returns 100 by default)
items = zot.top(limit=10)
for item in items:
    print(item['data']['title'], item['data']['itemType'])

# Search by keyword
results = zot.items(q='machine learning', limit=20)

# Retrieve all items (use everything() for complete results)
all_items = zot.everything(zot.items())

Core Concepts

  • A Zotero instance is bound to a single library (user or group). All methods operate on that library.
  • Item data lives in item['data']. Access fields like item['data']['title'], item['data']['creators'].
  • Pyzotero returns 100 items by default (API default is 25). Use zot.everything(zot.items()) to get all items.
  • Write methods return True on success or raise a ZoteroError.

Reference Files

File Contents
references/authentication.md Credentials, library types, local mode
references/read-api.md Retrieving items, collections, tags, groups
references/search-params.md Filtering, sorting, search parameters
references/write-api.md Creating, updating, deleting items
references/collections.md Collection CRUD operations
references/tags.md Tag retrieval and management
references/files-attachments.md File retrieval and attachment uploads
references/exports.md BibTeX, CSL-JSON, bibliography export
references/pagination.md follow(), everything(), generators
references/full-text.md Full-text content indexing and retrieval
references/saved-searches.md Saved search management
references/cli.md Command-line interface usage
references/error-handling.md Errors and exception handling

Read the full file on GitHub · 110 lines

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 · 110 lines · 85 tokens per session scan A a2ea54e97fa8

Subscribe to this mod's changes

pyzotero is a skill published in the GitHub repository crazymsn/academic-skills (22 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 85 tokens to every session and 1,064 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 97% identical to pyzotero, differing in 2 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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