ZotLLM 1.0.0

New

• CSL editor (new tab, Ctrl+7): find, adapt and install citation styles. This is a first version and still in development – feedback, bug reports and contributions are welcome as issues or pull requests.
  • Search the roughly 10,000 styles on zotero.org (the list is only loaded when you search – about 300 KB once, afterwards only when it has changed), open styles installed in Zotero or import a .csl file.
  • Other styles are adopted as a copy with their own name and ID, so the original is never overwritten; dependent styles become an independent copy of their parent style.
  • Preview with citeproc-js, the software Zotero itself uses: in-text citations and bibliography entries for nine typical document types, plus your own Zotero items, in a choice of languages.
  • Click a part of a citation to edit exactly that part: text before and after, italic, bold, small caps, capitalisation, name format ("and" or "&", initials, order, "et al."), date form, page labels; move, remove or add fields. Parts used in several places are flagged, and the examples changed by the last edit are marked.
  • Code view with live preview and error messages, undo/redo, earlier versions.
  • "Install in Zotero" uses the ZotLLM plugin and Zotero's own install function: the style is immediately available in Zotero, in the Word plugin and in ZotLLM. Without the current plugin, the style is saved as a .csl file.
• The Zotero plugin can install styles from the CSL editor – reinstall it once (Settings → Zotero and export → Save plugin).

Changed

• Literature review in five steps: "Keywords" (search queries) and "Select literature" are now separate steps. Every step has the same layout: the steps at the top, below them the collapsed prompt (title, research question, corpora) on the left and the buttons for the next step on the right, always in the same place.
• After writing, the review switches to "Check" and shows the text there; the check findings are collapsed into one summary line.
• Evaluation sheets can be viewed: in "Evaluate", a click on a text shows its sheet – fields, key findings, key quotations (opening the PDF in Zotero at the page) and keywords. "Recreate sheet" re-reads a single text.
• Outline sections can now also be moved up.
• CSL editor: a change can apply only to in-text citations or only to the bibliography, even where both use the same macro (e.g. the year) – the clicked part gets its own copy of the macro. The filter for styles installed in Zotero also searches short titles and ignores accents ("fhnw" finds "Schreibberatung PH FHNW").
• CSL editor – examples:
  • "Choose item types": besides the nine default examples, every other item type Zotero knows (e.g. case, statute, conference paper, film); default examples can be hidden. The list comes from Zotero's schema.
  • Examples come from your own library where a matching item exists (for articles with the matching number of authors); otherwise made-up English examples, mapped to CSL the way Zotero does it.
  • "Collection …": show the items of a Zotero collection as examples.
• CSL editor – moving parts: "Earlier"/"Later" leave a group at its edge, "To the start"/"To the end" jump there. If the selected part stands alone (like the year in a date macro), the place of the macro or the whole condition is moved – e.g. the year to the end of the bibliography entry. The bar above the selection shows the path through the macros.
• CSL editor – "et al.": clearer fields ("et al." from … names / of these, show) with an example.

Fixed

• Static files in folders starting with "v" were mistaken for versioned paths.
• Formulas in LaTeX notation written by the language model ($\beta = .35$, $\ge 21$) now appear as text (β = .35, ≥ 21) in Word, Markdown, copied text, the Zotero note and the app; the LaTeX export keeps them as formulas. The writing prompt now asks for plain text with Unicode characters instead.
• "Shin et al. [@key]" no longer becomes "Shin et al. (Shin et al. 2021)": if the author is named right before the citation, it only shows year and page – in Word via Zotero's "suppress-author", in LaTeX via \parencite*.

Install (Windows)

Download ZotLLM-Setup-1.0.0.exe below and run it (per user, no admin rights). Check the download against ZotLLM-Setup-1.0.0.exe.sha256. The installer is built by GitHub Actions from the source code of this release and is not code-signed yet, so Windows SmartScreen warns ("Unknown publisher"): click More info → Run anyway. If that option is missing (e.g. on managed PCs), right-click the file → Properties → tick Unblock → OK, then start it again.

Then enable Zotero's local API (Zotero → Settings → Advanced) and follow the setup checklist.

Please note

• ZotLLM is vibe-coded: it was written by Claude (Anthropic) in Claude Code and tested in daily use, not reviewed line by line by a human developer.
• Use it as a tool, not as a replacement for your own scholarly work – read the sources, verify critically and do not submit generated text as your own. See the README section on the risk of deskilling.
• ZotLLM is an independent project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Zotero or the Corporation for Digital Scholarship. Zotero is a registered trademark of the Corporation for Digital Scholarship.