cli-anything-zotero

name	cli-anything-zotero
description	Full-featured CLI for Zotero reference management. Search, import by DOI/PMID, export BibTeX, attach PDFs, semantic search, manage tags/collections, and more. Use this tool whenever you need to interact with a Zotero library programmatically.

cli-anything-zotero

Agent-native CLI for Zotero 7/8/9 desktop. 40+ commands across four backends.

Before You Start

1. Run zotero-cli --json app doctor first. If write_ready is false, follow next_steps (start Zotero / install plugin / enable Local API).
2. Prefer zotero-cli --json ... for machine-readable results (ok, status, code, key).
3. Write ops are appended to a local audit log: zotero-cli --json audit tail --limit 20 / audit path.
4. Optionally run zotero-cli app check-update once per session.

When to Use

• User asks to search, find, or look up papers in their Zotero library
• User needs to import a paper by DOI or PMID
• User wants to export citations or BibTeX
• User needs to attach a PDF to a Zotero item
• User wants to find available PDFs for items missing them
• User asks about collection statistics, duplicates, or annotations
• User needs semantic search ("find papers similar to X")
• User wants to update metadata, tags, or manage collections

Key Commands by Task

Search & Discovery

# Keyword search
zotero-cli item find "query" --limit 10

# Search all Zotero fields, tags, notes, and annotations
zotero-cli item find  --scope fields -- 10


zotero-cli item find  --scope everything -- 10


zotero-cli item search-fulltext  -- 10


zotero-cli item semantic-search  --top-k 10


zotero-cli item similar ITEM_KEY --top-k 5


zotero-cli item search-annotations  --color  -- 10


zotero-cli --json item duplicates --by doi -- 20
zotero-cli --json item merge KEEP OTHER1 OTHER2