zotero-research

zotero-research is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from Robernetes/zotero-mcp. It costs 84 tokens per session (3,756 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A workflow for searching a local Zotero library and adding properly formatted citations and bibliographies to Markdown or Word documents. Zotero is a reference manager that stores research sources; supported styles include APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE, and Vancouver.

In plain words
What is it for?
For finding references, viewing source details, inserting citations, and creating or updating bibliographies in Markdown and Word files.
Why use it?
It reduces manual searching, citation formatting, and bibliography updates when writing research-based documents. Zotero must be open and allow local application access.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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

Good fit For finding references, viewing source details, inserting citations, and creating or updating bibliographies in Markdown and Word files.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/robernetes/zotero-mcp/zotero-research
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 Robernetes/zotero-mcp --skill zotero-research
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Robernetes/zotero-mcp

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 zotero-research

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

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/robernetes/zotero-mcp/zotero-research"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/robernetes/zotero-mcp/zotero-research.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 84 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 3,756 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 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 $0.00084 $0.03756
Opus 5.5 $0.00034 $0.01502
Sonnet 5.5 $0.00017 $0.00751
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00376

Measured today against content hash 1447775f1d8b, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

zotero-research 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 today.

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.

skills/zotero-research/SKILL.md · 147 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 147 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Investigación y citas con Zotero

Este flujo conecta con la biblioteca local de Zotero (API local en el puerto 23119). Zotero debe estar abierto con el ajuste "Allow other applications on this computer to communicate with Zotero" habilitado.

1. Buscar referencias

  1. Usa zotero_search con palabras clave (query). Si ningún item las contiene todas, devuelve los que contienen alguna con partialMatch: true y matchedWords: revisa por el título que de verdad traten el tema antes de citarlos.
  2. Si el usuario menciona una carpeta/colección, consúltala con zotero_list_collections y filtra con collectionKey.
  3. Presenta los resultados con: clave, título, autores y año. No inventes datos: usa solo lo que devuelve la herramienta.

Buscar fuera de la biblioteca

Si la biblioteca no tiene lo que el usuario necesita, o pide fuentes nuevas, usa zotero_find_external:

  1. query con el tema, título o autores (en el idioma de las publicaciones buscadas; en inglés suele haber más resultados), o doi si ya lo conoces. Filtra con yearFrom/yearTo si pide fuentes recientes, y usa includeAbstract: true para juzgar la relevancia.
  2. Presenta título, autores, año, revista y DOI. Señala cuáles tienen acceso abierto (openAccessUrl) y cuáles ya están en la biblioteca (inLibrary.key, con sus colecciones en inLibrary.collections): esas se pueden citar directamente con su key, sin guardarlas otra vez.
  3. Las que no están en la biblioteca no se pueden citar todavía: hay que guardarlas antes con zotero_add_item (ver abajo).
  4. Si llega un aviso de que OpenAlex no respondió, los resultados son de Crossref; menciónalo solo si importa (p. ej. no hay datos de acceso abierto).

Guardar en la biblioteca

  1. Guarda solo lo que el usuario elija: nunca guardes resultados por tu cuenta ni en bloque sin que lo pida.
  2. Llama zotero_add_item con doi (o openAlexId si no tiene DOI), y collectionKey (de zotero_list_collections) y tags si el usuario los indica. Sin apply devuelve una vista previa: muéstrale título, autores, año y la colección destino (target).
  3. Cuando confirme, repite la llamada con apply: true. La respuesta trae la key del item nuevo: úsala directamente con zotero_cite o zotero_insert_citation_docx.
  4. Si responde saved: false porque ya existe (inLibrary.key), usa esa key para citar. Aunque el usuario haya pedido guardarlo en otra colección, no uses allowDuplicate: crearía un segundo item igual en su biblioteca. zotero-mcp no puede añadir un item existente a otra colección; si el usuario lo quiere también ahí, puede arrastrarlo en Zotero. Usa allowDuplicate solo si el usuario pide expresamente un duplicado.
    • Al terminar, dile qué publicaciones no se añadieron a la colección pedida porque ya estaban en la biblioteca, y en qué colecciones están (inLibrary.collections).
  5. Requiere Zotero abierto. Sin collectionKey se guarda en la colección seleccionada en Zotero: si el usuario no dijo dónde, pregúntale o díselo en la vista previa.

Read the full file on GitHub · 147 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. today Changed · +16 lines 1447775f1d8b
  2. yesterday Changed · +38 lines · +12 tokens per session 4936795baa9a
  3. 3d ago Changed · +9 lines 55c96cbba0a1
  4. 2mo ago First seen · 84 lines · 72 tokens per session scan A 0c08501fb572

Subscribe to this mod's changes

zotero-research is a skill published in the GitHub repository Robernetes/zotero-mcp (1 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 84 tokens to every session and 3,756 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5.5. 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 2026-08-31.

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