#77th of 12 in MCP serversFor science, health and research, research and papers
zotero-mcp
MCP server and CLI that lets AI assistants search and annotate Zotero
- Stars
- 5.9k
- License
- MIT
- Last commit
- Nov 2026
- Last release
- Nov 2026
- Language
- Python
2,614 on 21 Apr 20265,858 on 10 Nov 2026
From GitHub's daily star counts.
Checked on GitHub.
Overview
Zotero MCP exposes a Zotero library to MCP clients such as Claude Desktop, ChatGPT and Cherry Studio. It searches by metadata, full text or embeddings, reads PDFs, places annotations, and adds items by DOI, URL, ISBN or BibTeX. The same package ships a zotero-cli with an agent skill for shell-based agents, and a plugin that adds a chat panel inside Zotero.
Who it is for: Researchers using Zotero who want AI assistants to search, read and cite papers
Strengths
- Local mode reads straight from zotero.sqlite; no web API key needed for reads
- Agent skill uses 98 tokens of context versus 7,939 for the default 38-tool MCP profile
- Semantic search supports local, OpenAI, Gemini or Ollama embeddings
- Annotations are placed on exact text, figures or equations; adds items by DOI, ISBN or BibTeX
Weaknesses
- As an MCP server, tool schemas cost about 8k to 11k tokens on every request
- Local writes need Zotero 10+ and a one-time authorize step, or a web API key
- Semantic search, PDF layout and Scite are optional extras needing extra installs
- Zotero Agent plugin is AGPL-3.0, while the server and CLI are MIT
What it needs
- GPU optional
- Docker
- Needs Zotero 7+ with local API enabled, Python 3.10+, ChromaDB and sentence-transformers (semantic extra), PyMuPDF (pdf extra)
- Models: OpenAI embeddings, Gemini embeddings, Ollama embeddings, sentence-transformers (local)
Quick answers
Is zotero-mcp open source?
Yes. Its code is on GitHub under the MIT license.
Can you run zotero-mcp with Docker?
Yes. Its repository has a Docker setup: a Dockerfile, a Compose file or a published image.
Does zotero-mcp need a GPU?
No. It runs on a CPU and can use a GPU when you have one.
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