MCP Zotero

npx mcp-zotero

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "zotero-mcp": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "mcp-zotero"
      ]
    }
  }
}

A reference manager is the one place where a researcher's reading has already been curated and deduplicated, which makes it a far better retrieval target than a fresh web search. Five tools cover the library rather than trying to mirror the whole Zotero API: list collections, list the items inside one, fetch the details of a single paper, search the entire library, and pull recent additions. Setup has one step that catches people out — the numeric Zotero user ID is not shown anywhere in the application interface, so you obtain it by calling the keys endpoint with your API key and reading userID out of the response. Both the key and that ID go in as environment variables.