Summary
Your reference library becomes something you can ask about mid-sentence.
Five tools, all of them reads: collections, their contents, one item's details, a library-wide search, and the recent list. That is enough to settle "what do I already have on this" without opening Zotero, and not enough to file anything — nothing here adds an item, a note or a tag. Collection keys and item keys are how the tools chain, so a search or a collection listing is the first call in nearly every sequence.
What it is
A read-only server over one Zotero user library: collections, their contents, item details, search and recent additions.
What you get
- The library's collections listed, and the items inside any one of them by collection key
- A search across the entire library from a single query
- Item-level detail for one paper by item key
- Recent additions with a limit, for resuming a reading list rather than re-finding it
Requirements
ZOTERO_API_KEY and ZOTERO_USER_ID — a personal API key and the user id of the library it belongs to.
Setup effort
One command plus a key — npm install -g mcp-zotero, then supply credentials