Get started with Zoteus
Choose Claude or ChatGPT, connect a hosted or free local Zotero library, and verify your first PDF passage. Setup, search readiness and troubleshooting.
Find a passage you remember, compare papers, or recover your own notes. Start with a paper you know so you can check what the assistant retrieves.
1. Choose your client and connection
Hosted: nothing to install
Use your synced Zotero library in Claude or ChatGPT. Zoteus maintains the server and provides email support. Individual starts at €7/month or €69/year.
You need access to custom connectors in your AI account. Hosted access cannot read files that exist only on your computer or in your WebDAV storage.
Hosted plans, from €7/monthFree: run on your computer
Connect Claude Desktop to the Zotero app and read your local PDFs. The open-source software is free, with the same tools and community support.
Keep Zotero running and enable its local API. Keyword search works without embeddings; search by meaning needs extra setup. Retrieved text is still sent to your chosen AI service.
Cursor and other clientsShared group library? Start with the review-team guide. ChatGPT requires a public HTTPS connector; a free local npx process cannot connect to ChatGPT. Self-hosting that remote is free software, but infrastructure and any API usage are your responsibility.
2. Check what is ready
Before a large research question, ask which library is connected, whether one PDF is readable, and whether search uses keywords or vectors. Search readiness explains metadata, notes, PDF coverage, embedding setup, and index limits. Hosted plans start at €7/month; the hosted requirements are worth checking before subscribing.
3. Get your first verified passage
Follow your first research task: find a known paper, retrieve a quotation, and open the page in Zotero to check it. You do not need to finish a whole-library semantic index first.
Then try annotations to literature notes, or compare evidence from several papers. AI conclusions can still be wrong even when references exist.
Troubleshooting
- Missing PDFs, local-only files, WebDAV and scans
- Search misses a known paper, returns keywords only, or stops indexing
- Claude connection problems
- ChatGPT tools or connection missing
Advanced reference
Use these after the first successful task: configuration, semantic search, passages and page images, citations, safe writes, files and sync, scholarly context, and research prompts.
For operators and developers: remote OAuth hosting, architecture, and code execution.
Choosing or migrating a connector
Zoteus and zotero-mcp compares two selected projects and links to the broader field. Zoteus complements the Zotero Connector: save papers in your browser with Zotero, then work with the library you have saved.
Source code and releases, MIT licensed. Privacy and data paths.