search-papers

name	search-papers
description	Semantic search over Zotero library (~441 economics/social science papers). Use when user needs to find papers, passages, or evidence on a topic.

Search Papers

Run the search tool against the user's indexed Zotero library.

How to search

Run this command via Bash, substituting the query:

cd ~/zotero-rag && ~/.local/bin/uv run python search.py "QUERY" N

• Replace QUERY with a descriptive search phrase (not just keywords; full semantic queries work best)
• Replace N with the number of results (default 5, use 10-15 for broad surveys)

Interpreting results

Each result shows:

• Similarity score (0-1, higher is better; >0.6 is a strong match)
• Citation (authors, year, title)
• Section label from the paper
• Passage text (the matching chunk)

How to respond

1. Run the search
2. Read the results carefully
3. Synthesize findings with proper citations (Author, Year)
4. If results are poor, try rephrasing the query or using more specific/different terminology
5. You may run multiple searches to triangulate across topics

If the index doesn't exist

If you get an error about missing collection, tell the user to run:

cd ~/zotero-rag && uv run python index.py