How-to guides

Step-by-step solutions for notes, citations, research queries, export, templates, and migration.

Each guide solves one task. Find the situation that matches yours.

Core usage

Browse your library in the Library View

You want to find a paper by collection, recent activity, search, or reading state, and open, note, or cite it.

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.

Explore citations in the graph view

You want your citations drawn as edges in the graph, or a graph of your research alone.

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.

Open an item's PDF in Obsidian

You want to read a Zotero PDF in an Obsidian tab instead of switching to Zotero.

How to edit PDF annotations in Obsidian

You want to create or change Zotero annotations while reading in Obsidian.

Use the annotation view

You want to browse an item's highlights in a sidebar while you read.

Use query files and query blocks

You want a live, filtered set of annotations or papers in a tab or a note.

Track reading status in the Query View

You want to mark, sort, and filter papers by a status that you keep on their notes.

Query your Zotero library

You want works, files, or reading marks as structured JSON.

Keep Zotero and Obsidian in sync

Your latest Zotero changes do not reach Obsidian yet, or you want ZotLit actions in Zotero's menus.

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.

Use a different template for different notes

Books, papers, or one collection need a look of their own.

Edit a profile as Markdown

You would rather type the profile document than use the Workbench tabs.

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 2.1 templates

You are on ZotLit 2.1 and want to know what the update changed for your templates.

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.

Troubleshooting

Update the Obsidian installer

ZotLit says that it needs a newer Electron version before it can start.

Suppress the Zotero security prompt

Zotero shows a confirmation dialog every time it opens an obsidian:// link.

Fix stale Zotero data

Zotero changes do not appear after you update a literature note.

Collect debug logs

You need to attach logs or debug output to a bug report.