A Python library for managing Zotero, a reference-management service for collecting and citing research sources. It connects to Zotero libraries through its web API.

Finding and reading references, creating or updating bibliographic items, organising collections and tags, uploading attachments, and exporting citations. It requires Zotero library credentials and an API key.

It avoids manually managing large collections of references, folders, tags, files, and citation exports. It also supports working with personal or shared Zotero libraries through code.

pyzotero — Skill for Claude Code by TobiasBlask

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 TobiasBlask/open-paper-machine --skill pyzotero

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/TobiasBlask/open-paper-machine

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install open-academic-paper-machine, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 33 skills, 21 commands, 4 agents.

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.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tobiasblask/open-paper-machine/pyzotero/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/tobiasblask/open-paper-machine/pyzotero)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tobiasblask/open-paper-machine/pyzotero"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tobiasblask/open-paper-machine/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.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tobiasblask/open-paper-machine/pyzotero"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tobiasblask/open-paper-machine/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 1,075 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 100% 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.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00085	$0.01075
Opus 5	$0.00043	$0.00537
Sonnet 5	$0.00017	$0.00215
Haiku 4.5	$0.00009	$0.00108

Measured 10d ago against content hash a8b4fd9a7788, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, 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 10d 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

100% identical to pyzotero — 0 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.

scientific-skills/pyzotero/SKILL.md · 112 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 112 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:

User ID: shown as "Your userID for use in API calls"
API Key: create at https://www.zotero.org/settings/keys/new
Library ID: for group libraries, the integer after /groups/ in the group URL

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 · 112 lines

Files

What ships with it

13 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.

10d ago First seen · 112 lines · 85 tokens per session scan A a8b4fd9a7788

Subscribe to this mod's changes

pyzotero is a skill published in the GitHub repository TobiasBlask/open-paper-machine (18 stars, last pushed 5mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 85 tokens to every session and 1,075 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 100% identical to pyzotero, differing in 0 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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