Imported from wentorai/research-plugins (skills/literature/fulltext/zotero-ai-butler-guide/SKILL.md). Install upstream with npx skills add wentorai/research-plugins --skill zotero-ai-butler-guide. Copyright stays with the author.

Zotero AI Butler Guide

Overview

Zotero AI Butler is a Zotero plugin that uses LLMs to summarize, analyze, and annotate academic papers directly within Zotero. It can generate structured summaries, extract key findings, compare papers, and answer questions about documents — all without leaving the reference manager. Supports multiple LLM backends (OpenAI, Claude, local models).

Installation

# Download .xpi from GitHub releases
# Zotero 7: Tools → Add-ons → Install Add-on From File

Configuration

### LLM Backend Setup (Preferences → AI Butler)

**Option 1: OpenAI**
- Provider: OpenAI
- Model: gpt-4o
- Set environment variable for credentials

**Option 2: Anthropic**
- Provider: Anthropic
- Model: claude-sonnet-4-20250514

**Option 3: Local (Ollama)**
- Provider: Ollama
- Endpoint: http://localhost:11434
- Model: llama3.1

**Option 4: Custom API**
- Provider: Custom
- Endpoint: your-api-url
- Compatible with OpenAI API format

Features

Paper Summarization

### Usage
1. Select paper in Zotero
2. Right-click → AI Butler → Summarize
3. Summary added as Zotero note

### Summary Templates
- **Quick Summary** (1 paragraph): Core contribution + method + result
- **Structured Summary**: Background / Method / Results / Limitations
- **Executive Brief**: Who should read this and why
- **Technical Deep-Dive**: Detailed methodology and math

Key Finding Extraction

### Extract structured information:
- **Research question**: What problem does this paper address?
- **Methodology**: What approach do the authors use?
- **Key results**: What are the main findings?
- **Contributions**: What is novel about this work?
- **Limitations**: What are the acknowledged limitations?
- **Future work**: What directions do the authors suggest?

Paper Comparison

### Compare multiple papers:
1. Select 2+ papers in Zotero
2. Right-click → AI Butler → Compare Papers
3. Generates comparison table:
   - Shared and unique contributions
   - Methodological differences
   - Performance comparison (if applicable)
   - Complementary insights

Q&A Mode

### Ask questions about papers:
1. Open paper in Zotero reader
2. AI Butler sidebar → Ask a question
3. Answers grounded in paper content with page references

Example questions:
- "What loss function do they use?"
- "How does this compare to prior work?"
- "What are the hyperparameters?"
- "Explain equation 3 in simpler terms"

Batch Processing

### Summarize multiple papers:
1. Select papers (or entire collection)
2. Right-click → AI Butler → Batch Summarize
3. Progress bar shows completion
4. Each paper gets a summary note attached

### Reading List Generation:
1. Select collection
2. AI Butler → Generate Reading Order
3. Suggests optimal reading sequence based on:
   - Citation relationships
   - Conceptual dependencies
   - Publication chronology

Custom Prompts

### Create custom analysis prompts:
# In AI Butler preferences → Custom Prompts

Prompt: "Systematic Review Extraction"
Template: |
  Extract the following from this paper:
  1. Study design (RCT, cohort, etc.)
  2. Sample size
  3. Primary outcome
  4. Effect size with CI
  5. Risk of bias indicators
  Format as structured JSON.

Integration with Zotero Workflow

### Combined Plugin Workflow
1. **Zotero Connector** → Import paper
2. **Zotero Sci-Hub** → Fetch PDF
3. **AI Butler** → Generate summary note
4. **Zotero Actions Tags** → Auto-tag based on summary
5. **Notero** → Sync to Notion with summary
6. **Better BibTeX** → Export citations for writing

Use Cases

Rapid screening: Quick summaries for literature triage
Paper comprehension: Ask clarifying questions
Comparison studies: Side-by-side paper analysis
Data extraction: Structured information for systematic reviews
Reading preparation: Generate briefings before journal club

References

Install zotero-ai-butler-guide and it becomes one more candidate the router can pick - when it fits.

A listing is a routing target with a manifest: what it does, which domains it covers, what it costs and who publishes it. Once installed it sits beside your own models and tools, is scored like any other candidate for each request, and shows up in the trace when it wins. Ratings come from workspaces that installed it, one per account.

zotero-ai-butler-guide

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