Zotero MCP Bridge

Zotero MCP Bridge is a Zotero 7 plugin that will expose a local Model Context Protocol (MCP) server so LLM clients can browse and query your Zotero library with tool calls. The plugin is written in TypeScript and will integrate the modelcontextprotocol/typescript-sdk for the MCP implementation.

This repository started from the canonical Zotero plugin template, but the template-only samples and UI chrome have been removed so we can focus on the MCP bridge code.

Project Goals

• Ship a local MCP server that runs inside Zotero and surfaces Zotero-specific tools such as listing open tabs, searching items, and browsing collections.
• Provide a lightweight communication shim so LLMs can attach to the running Zotero MCP server.
• Keep the UI surface minimal—most interaction should happen through MCP tool calls rather than extra Zotero menus.

Repository Layout

• src/ – TypeScript source for the plugin, including the MCP runtime scaffolding.
• addon/ – Static assets packaged with the XPI (manifest, icons, locale strings).
• test/ – Mocha test suite executed via npm test.
• zotero-plugin.config.ts – Build configuration for zotero-plugin-scaffold.

Getting Started

npm install
npm run build   # bundles the plugin and runs `tsc --noEmit`

During development you can hot-reload the plugin into Zotero with:

npm run start

Run tests in a scaffolded Zotero instance with:

npm test

Note: the build pipeline expects Zotero 7 and the latest Node.js LTS release. See the official developer guide for environment prerequisites.

Contributing

• Track work with bd (see AGENTS.md).
• Keep code TypeScript-first with strict linting (npm run lint:check).
• Commit code and .beads/issues.jsonl together so issue state mirrors code state.