Zotero

Connect Crow to Zotero to search your reference library and manage citations through your AI assistant.

What You Get

• Search your Zotero library by title, author, or tag
• Browse collections and subcollections
• Retrieve full citation metadata for bibliography generation
• Access PDF attachments and notes

Prerequisites

This integration requires uvx (Python package runner). Install it with:

# macOS
brew install uv

# Linux
curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

Setup

Step 1: Find your User ID

1. Go to zotero.org/settings/keys
2. Your User ID is displayed at the top of the page (a numeric value)

Step 2: Create an API key

1. On the same page, click Create new private key
2. Name it (e.g., "Crow")
3. Under Personal Library, check:
   • Allow library access
   • Allow notes access
4. Under Default Group Permissions, select Read Only if you want access to group libraries
5. Click Save Key
6. Copy the API key from the confirmation page

Step 3: Add to Crow

Paste both values in Crow's Nest → Settings → Integrations, or on the Setup page at /setup.

The environment variables are ZOTERO_API_KEY and ZOTERO_USER_ID.

Required Permissions

Permission	Why
Allow library access	Read items, collections, and metadata from your library
Allow notes access	Read notes attached to library items

Troubleshooting

"403 Forbidden" error

Your API key may not have library access enabled. Go to zotero.org/settings/keys, click on your key, and ensure Allow library access is checked.

"uvx: command not found"

Install uv first (see Prerequisites above), then restart your terminal.

Wrong User ID

The User ID is a number, not your username. Find it at the top of zotero.org/settings/keys.