Hi all,

I'd like to suggest a feature that goes beyond simply sending a single document to an external AI tool: the ability to chat with your entire Zotero library (or a specific collection) using a "Bring Your Own Key" (BYOK) approach.

How it could work:

Users add their own API key (Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, etc.) in the plugin/settings
Zotero indexes the PDFs in a collection and uses retrieval (RAG) to answer questions, citing the specific paper and page the information came from
All API calls go directly from the user's machine to their chosen provider — no Zotero server involved, no extra cost to the project, full privacy

Why this matters:

Sending one PDF at a time to an AI chat (like Paperpile allows) doesn't scale well when you want to search or ask questions across dozens of papers at once. A BYOK chat-with-library feature would solve that, while keeping costs and privacy fully in the user's hands.
I know plugins like "Zotero GPT" already explore similar ideas — would be great to hear if the core team has considered something like this.

Love Zotero, keep the good work :)
Thanks,
Sérgio