An AI research assistant plugin that deeply integrates LLMs into Zotero, featuring paper chat, multi-paper comparison, Agent Mode for automated literature management, and note export to Obsidian/Logseq.
llm-for-zotero is a Zotero plugin for academic researchers, currently at version 3.8.2, developed in TypeScript under the AGPL-3.0-or-later license. Built on the zotero-plugin-scaffold and zotero-plugin-toolkit, with core dependencies including fflate (compression) and katex (LaTeX rendering), it uses zotero-plugin build for building.
The plugin's core capability centers on "Paper Chat": directly querying the current PDF within the Zotero reader, automatically loading the full paper for the first message, switching to focused retrieval for subsequent turns, and generating clickable citations that jump to original paragraphs. It supports one-click explanation of selected text, screenshot uploads (up to 10), and local file uploads (PDF/DOCX/PPTX/TXT/Markdown) as additional context. Multi-paper comparison is enabled via / to reference other open papers. MinerU integration provides higher-fidelity extraction of tables, formulas, and figures.
Agent Mode (Beta) elevates the plugin from a chat tool to a research Agent: read tools (unrestricted) can search items/collections, read metadata and papers, render PDF pages; academic discovery tools query CrossRef and Semantic Scholar for metadata and citation relationships; write tools (tagging, metadata updates, collection management, etc.) adopt an auditable + revocable design with session-level undo for the last 10 operations. File system and scripting tools support local file I/O and Zotero JavaScript execution.
The Skills system provides 8 built-in skills (simple-paper-qa, evidence-based-qa, analyze-figures, compare-papers, library-analysis, literature-review, write-note, import-cited-reference) and supports user-defined skills as Markdown files. File-Based Notes save research notes as local Markdown files, compatible with Obsidian vaults and Logseq graphs, with automatic YAML frontmatter and Pandoc citation syntax support.
For backend support, the plugin abstracts four API protocols (responses_api, openai_chat_compat, anthropic_messages, gemini_native), allows per-task provider/model configuration, and supports reasoning levels and hyperparameter adjustment in the chat panel. Beyond traditional APIs, it supports WebChat mode (bridging ChatGPT/DeepSeek web UI via sync-for-zotero, no separate API key needed), Codex App Server (for ChatGPT Plus users), and Claude Code (experimental). A standalone window mode is triggered via Ctrl+Shift+L / Cmd+Shift+L, containing Paper Chat, Library Chat, and conversation history.
The project has 1,098+ commits, 47 open issues, and 2 open PRs on GitHub, showing high activity, maintained directly by author Yile Wang.