How-to guides
Step-by-step solutions for notes, citations, export, templates, and migration.
Each guide solves one task. Find the situation that matches yours.
Core usage
Create and open literature notes
You have a Zotero item and want a literature note in your vault.
Insert citations
You need a Markdown citation in the current note.
Review, copy, and troubleshoot references
You need to inspect occurrences, copy bibliography entries, or fix reference errors.
Export a note with citations
You need a Word document or web page with formatted citations and a bibliography.
Export with native Pandoc
You need your own Pandoc CLI, bibliography file, or command-line options.
Keep notes up to date
Your Zotero data changed and the literature note is stale.
Import Zotero notes
You want child notes from Zotero as standalone Markdown files.
Use the annotation view
You want to browse highlights in a sidebar while reading in Zotero.
Set up live updates
You want Zotero to push changes to Obsidian automatically.
Use ZotLit on multiple devices
You sync a vault between computers where Zotero lives in different locations.
Templates
Install the ZotLit skill
You want an agent to edit and test templates in this vault.
Customize a template
The default output does not match what you want in your notes.
Explore template data
You need to find which fields are available for a template.
Configure frontmatter properties
You want custom YAML fields in your literature note frontmatter.
Enable JavaScript templates
You need Eta syntax or JavaScript expressions in your templates.
Migration
Migrate from Pandoc Reference List
You want to move an existing citation workflow to ZotLit.
Migrate from v1
You are upgrading from ZotLit v1 and need to confirm the transition.
Migrate v1 Eta templates
You have custom Eta templates from v1 that need updating for v2.