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.
npx skills add virtualarchitectures/Local-Zotero-MCP --skill searching-zotero-librarygit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/virtualarchitectures/Local-Zotero-MCPWrote 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.
[](https://agentmods.dev/skills/virtualarchitectures/local-zotero-mcp/searching-zotero-library)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/virtualarchitectures/local-zotero-mcp/searching-zotero-library"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/virtualarchitectures/local-zotero-mcp/searching-zotero-library/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.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/virtualarchitectures/local-zotero-mcp/searching-zotero-library"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/virtualarchitectures/local-zotero-mcp/searching-zotero-library.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>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 | $0.00075 | $0.00880 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00037 | $0.00440 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00015 | $0.00176 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00007 | $0.00088 |
Grade A, and why
searching-zotero-library 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 12d 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.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 69 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Searching the Zotero library
Requires the Zotero desktop app running locally with Settings > Advanced > "Allow other
applications on this computer to communicate with Zotero" enabled. All tools below take an
optional library argument — "user" (default) for the personal library, or a group ID (from
list_groups) for a synced group library.
Quick start
Use search_items for most queries:
search_items(query="climate change")
search_items(query="ocean acidification", qmode="everything") # full-text search
search_items(query="adaptation", item_type="journalArticle")
search_items(query="review", tag="to-read")
search_items(query="climate", limit=20, start=20) # page 2
| Param | Notes |
|---|---|
qmode |
"titleCreatorYear" (default) or "everything" for full-text search of indexed PDFs |
item_type |
e.g. "journalArticle", "book", "bookSection", "conferencePaper", "report", "thesis", "preprint" — full list via get_item_types |
tag |
Exact tag match; see list_tags to discover tag names |
limit / start |
Page through results 1–100 at a time |
If a qmode="titleCreatorYear" search comes up short or empty, retry with
qmode="everything" before telling the user there are no results — it only searches
metadata, not full text.
When qmode="everything" results look unreliable
qmode="everything" is Zotero's own local quicksearch, not a strict filter — Zotero's own docs
note it can behave more loosely than expected (e.g. surfacing items with no real match, or
missing content that hasn't been indexed yet). If results look implausible — unrelated to the
query, or roughly the same set you'd get with no query at all — don't start reading or
converting documents to verify by hand, and don't reach for WebSearch/WebFetch either. Both
burn resources (tokens, disk, or an unrequested trip to the open web) on a check the search tool
was supposed to handle, and it isn't your call to make silently. Instead:
What ships with it
2 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.
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.
- 12d ago First seen · 69 lines · 75 tokens per session scan A 4a0197e4875c
searching-zotero-library is a skill published in the GitHub repository virtualarchitectures/Local-Zotero-MCP (0 stars, last pushed 4d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 75 tokens to every session and 880 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 2026-08-31.
Other skills, from other repositories
systematic-debugging
Use when encountering any bug, test failure, or unexpected behavior, before proposing fixes.
local-ai-agents
Build local-first AI agents that run entirely on a developer workstation with Microsoft Foundry Local and Qwen function-calling models. Covers Small Language Models (SLMs), the OpenAI-compatible local endpoint, sandboxed local tools, local RAG with Chroma, local MCP servers, hybrid cloud/local routing, and the…
next-cache-components-adoption
Turn on Cache Components in a Next.js app and resolve the blocking routes it surfaces. Use when the user wants to enable, adopt, or migrate to Cache Components, flip the cacheComponents flag, work through a flood of blocking-prerender / instant validation errors, run the cache-components-instant-false codemod, or…
chat-pet-sprite-creation
Use when creating or changing VS Code chat pet sprite art, sprite sheets, state animations, eye treatments, Stable/Insiders variants, or pet transitions under src/vs/workbench/contrib/chat/browser/widget/media/chatPet.
cpu-profile-analysis
Analyze V8/Chrome CPU profiles (.cpuprofile) and DevTools trace files (Trace-.json). Use when: profiling performance, investigating slow functions, comparing code paths, finding bottlenecks, analyzing timeToRequest, understanding call trees from sampling profiler data, analyzing layout/paint/rendering, investigating…
insight-error-page
Write or audit an insight-kind error page for the Next.js dev overlay. Use when creating a new errors/ .mdx page, auditing an existing one, or checking that a page matches the framework fix cards. Covers page structure, title alignment, FixCard cards with Copy prompt button, code snippets, terminology verification…