ZotMD

Sync one personal Zotero library and its PDF annotations to Obsidian-ready Markdown.

• One note per Better BibTeX citation key
• Incremental metadata, attachment, annotation, rename, and removal updates
• User-written Notes preserved across rerenders
• Read-only Zotero Web API access
• Mutation-free dry runs
• Separate Python API for tagged papers and already-local PDFs

Limits

• Personal libraries only
• One-way synchronization from Zotero to Markdown
• macOS primary; other platforms best effort
• PDFs linked from generated notes, not copied

Install

Requirements: Python 3.13 or newer, uv, Better BibTeX, and a read-only Zotero API key.

uv tool install zotmd
zotmd config
zotmd sync --full --dry-run
zotmd sync --full

Later updates:

zotmd sync

Documentation

• Synchronize notes: setup, preview, and first sync
• Configure synchronization: paths, removals, and templates
• Discover local papers: typed Python records and validated PDF fingerprints
• Troubleshoot ZotMD: common failures and safe recovery

License

MIT