zotero-find

Zotero Find

Find and identify items in the user's Zotero library. This skill focuses on discovery — figuring out which papers/books are relevant. For deep reading, hand off to zotero-read. For comparing papers, hand off to zotero-compare.

Step 1: Classify the query and scope

Before searching, determine the query type — this controls which search modes to use:

Query type	Example	Search strategy
Author	"anything by Stomakhin"	Keyword titleCreatorYear (primary) + semantic (secondary)
Topic	"papers about p-multigrid"	Semantic (primary) + keyword everything (secondary)
Specific item	"the Hesthaven book"	Keyword titleCreatorYear only — fast and precise
Content	"which paper explains X"	Keyword everything (primary) + semantic (secondary)

Collection scoping — be smart about it

Don't always list all collections. Instead:

1. If the query mentions a domain keyword (e.g., "multigrid", "MPM", "DG"), use zotero_search_collections to find matching collections directly:

   mcp__zotero__zotero_search_collections(query="multigrid")
   

2. If a matching collection is found, mention it and ask: "I see you have a 'Multigrid Methods' collection — should I search there, or across your whole library?"
3. If no collection matches, or the user's query is cross-cutting, search the full library without asking.

Skip scoping entirely when:

• The query is very specific (exact title, citekey, author name)
• The user says "search everything" or "across my whole library"

Step 2: Run parallel searches

Run the appropriate searches in parallel as tool calls (not subagents — tool calls are faster):

For topic/content queries:

# Run these two in parallel:
mcp__zotero__zotero_semantic_search(query="<natural language query>", limit=10)
mcp__zotero__zotero_search_items(query="<key technical terms>", qmode="everything", limit=10)

For author queries:

# Run these two in parallel:
mcp__zotero__zotero_search_items(query="<Lastname>", qmode="titleCreatorYear", limit=10)
mcp__zotero__zotero_semantic_search(query="<Lastname topic>", limit=10)

For specific item queries:

# Single search is enough:
mcp__zotero__zotero_search_items(query="<title fragment or author>", qmode="titleCreatorYear", limit=5)

For structured queries (author + year, field combinations):

Use advanced_search for precision:

mcp__zotero__zotero_advanced_search(conditions=[
  {"field": "creator", "operator": "contains", "value": "Stomakhin"},
  {"field": "date", "operator": "is", "value": "2013"}
], join_mode="all", limit=10)

Search fallback tips

• If keyword search returns nothing, simplify: try just the last name, or a single distinctive term
• Compound queries like "Hu MLS-MPM" may fail — try "Hu" alone or "MLS-MPM" alone
• If semantic returns nothing useful, try qmode="everything" with different term combinations

Step 3: Merge, deduplicate, and rank

Combine results from all searches:

1. High confidence — found by both semantic AND keyword. Top of the list.
2. Keyword-only — precise term match. Keep these.
3. Semantic-only — conceptually related. Flag as "possibly relevant."

Deduplicate by item key. Filter out attachment items (type: "attachment").

If the two search modes returned completely different results with zero overlap, note this — it means the topic uses different vocabulary across papers. Keyword-only hits are likely the most directly relevant.

Step 4: Present results concisely

Show a scannable list — no workflow documentation, just results:

Found 3 items:

1. Melander et al. (2024) — A p-Multigrid Accelerated Nodal SEM... [preprint] Match: keyword + semantic | Collection: Multigrid Methods

2. Zhang et al. (2010) — Chebyshev pseudospectral multigrid... [paper] Match: keyword only

3. Ghia et al. (1982) — High-Re solutions... [paper] Match: semantic only (uses h-multigrid, not p-multigrid)

Keep it short. Include author, year, title, match mode, and one-line context only when it adds value (e.g., clarifying why a semantic-only hit is tangential).

Do not extract PDF content — that's zotero-read's job.

Tools reference

Tool	Purpose
zotero_search_collections	Find collection by name (for smart scoping)
zotero_get_collections	List all collections (fallback)
zotero_get_collection_items	Browse items in a collection
zotero_semantic_search	AI-powered conceptual search
zotero_search_items	Keyword search (title/author/year or full-text)
zotero_advanced_search	Multi-criteria structured search
zotero_get_item_metadata	Get metadata, abstract, BibTeX