zotero_search_items
Search your Zotero library by substring match on title, creators, year, and optionally abstract. Use simple queries like 'Author Year' to retrieve matching items with metadata and abstracts.
Instructions
Search Zotero items by substring match against metadata (title, creators, year, and — in 'everything' mode — abstract). Returns metadata + abstracts as markdown. IMPORTANT: keep queries SHORT and SIMPLE — 'Author Year' (e.g. 'Brewer 2011') or just an author name ('Cladder-Micus'). This is substring matching, not web search: each extra word NARROWS the match, so adding topic words usually returns fewer results, not more. For topic discovery, use zotero_semantic_search instead; for tag filtering use zotero_search_by_tag. If a query finds nothing, this tool automatically falls back to simplified queries and then semantic search. query: required substring. qmode: 'titleCreatorYear' (default) matches only title/authors/year; 'everything' also searches abstract. item_type: '-attachment' (default) excludes attachments; pass 'journalArticle', 'book', etc. to filter. tag: optional list of tag conditions (ANDed). limit: max results (default 10). collection_key: 8-char key to restrict to a collection (bypasses the fallback cascade). Example: zotero_search_items(query='Cladder-Micus') or zotero_search_items(query='Brewer 2011', limit=5).
Input Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| query | Yes | Search query string | |
| qmode | No | Query mode (titleCreatorYear or everything) | titleCreatorYear |
| item_type | No | Type of items to search for. Use "-attachment" to exclude attachments. | -attachment |
| limit | No | Maximum number of results to return | |
| tag | No | Tag filter. Accepts ["tagA", "tagB"] (preferred), a bare string "tagA", a JSON-string list '["tagA", "tagB"]', or the dict-shape [{"tag": "tagA"}] sometimes emitted by clients that confuse the filter form with Zotero's stored-tag form. All are normalized internally to the list[str] form pyzotero expects. | |
| collection_key | No | Optional collection key to scope the search to a specific collection. When provided, bypasses the fallback cascade and searches the collection directly. |
Output Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| result | Yes |