steven-jianhao-li/zotero-AI-Butler

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

1648 stars · 89 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

A Zotero plugin that acts as an AI-powered research butler: it automatically scans PDFs added to your Zotero library and sends them to a user-configured LLM API to produce structured Markdown notes, chapter-by-chapter deep reads, mind maps, and multi-paper literature review reports. It runs entirely inside Zotero, sends requests directly from the local device to the chosen model provider, and lets users customize all prompts.

Use cases

• automatically summarize papers added to my Zotero library
• generate notes from academic PDFs with an LLM
• create a literature review across multiple papers
• generate mind maps from research papers
• ask AI questions about a paper while reading it in Zotero
• read long academic papers faster without losing key points
• summarize scanned or image-only PDFs of papers

When to choose

• You already use Zotero to manage references and want AI summaries to appear automatically as attached notes
• You have your own API key for a mainstream LLM provider and want requests sent straight from your device with no middleman service
• You want extras like academic-poster image summaries, mind maps with PNG/OPML export, and an in-app Q&A sidebar
• You want to customize the prompts used for reading and summarizing papers

When to avoid

• You do not use Zotero, since this is a Zotero plugin and cannot run standalone
• You are unwilling to obtain and configure your own LLM API key, as the project provides no model service or proxy
• You need fully offline summarization without any external LLM API access
• You primarily process non-PDF or non-academic documents

Facets

plugin · maturity active

llm-inference pdf markdown workflow-automation chat-interface artificial-intelligence large-language-models education developer-tools pdf cross-platform zotero zotero-plugin paper-reading literature-review research-assistant note-taking mindmap academic-tools knowledge-management pdf-summarization natural-language-processing desktop

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markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="steven-jianhao-li/zotero-AI-Butler")