Upgrade StorageNew plugin: Semantic Search (local) – find passages in your PDFs by meaning
Hi all,
I'd like to share a plugin I've been using for my own research for a few years and have now rebuilt as a proper Zotero plugin (Zotero 7–10):
https://github.com/ilDon/zotero-semantic-search
It adds semantic (meaning-based) search over the full text of your PDFs. Instead of keywords, you type a sentence or paste a paragraph from your draft, and it returns the passages in your library that are closest in meaning, with the page, linked to the Zotero item. It works fully locally (no internet, account, subs, etc.) across 109 languages, including cross-language (e.g. an English query finds Italian or German passages).
Main features:
- Full-text index of all your PDFs, updated automatically when you add new ones
- Results open the PDF at the right page; you can copy a citation, save the results as a collection, filter by item type, and mark passages as to review / cited / irrelevant
- Saved searches
- "Similar documents" section in the item pane
- One-click OCR for scanned PDFs without a text layer (requires ocrmypdf)
- Optional local MCP server, so AI assistants on your computer (Claude, Grok, ChatGPT, etc.) can search your library and cite from it
Everything runs locally inside Zotero: your PDFs and queries never leave your computer. The only download is the embedding model (590 MB, once).
Install: download the .xpi from the latest release (https://github.com/ilDon/zotero-semantic-search/releases/latest), then Tools → Plugins → gear icon → Install Plugin From File. The plugin updates itself from then on.
It's been tested on macOS (Zotero 9 and 10); feedback from Windows and Linux users would be very welcome, as would bug reports and suggestions (GitHub issues or here).
Thanks!
I'd like to share a plugin I've been using for my own research for a few years and have now rebuilt as a proper Zotero plugin (Zotero 7–10):
https://github.com/ilDon/zotero-semantic-search
It adds semantic (meaning-based) search over the full text of your PDFs. Instead of keywords, you type a sentence or paste a paragraph from your draft, and it returns the passages in your library that are closest in meaning, with the page, linked to the Zotero item. It works fully locally (no internet, account, subs, etc.) across 109 languages, including cross-language (e.g. an English query finds Italian or German passages).
Main features:
- Full-text index of all your PDFs, updated automatically when you add new ones
- Results open the PDF at the right page; you can copy a citation, save the results as a collection, filter by item type, and mark passages as to review / cited / irrelevant
- Saved searches
- "Similar documents" section in the item pane
- One-click OCR for scanned PDFs without a text layer (requires ocrmypdf)
- Optional local MCP server, so AI assistants on your computer (Claude, Grok, ChatGPT, etc.) can search your library and cite from it
Everything runs locally inside Zotero: your PDFs and queries never leave your computer. The only download is the embedding model (590 MB, once).
Install: download the .xpi from the latest release (https://github.com/ilDon/zotero-semantic-search/releases/latest), then Tools → Plugins → gear icon → Install Plugin From File. The plugin updates itself from then on.
It's been tested on macOS (Zotero 9 and 10); feedback from Windows and Linux users would be very welcome, as would bug reports and suggestions (GitHub issues or here).
Thanks!