Every Zotero highlight in one place — browse, link, cite

Hi everyone — maker here.

This started as a Q&A tool, but the most-requested thing from researchers was something else entirely: notes trapped in the one paper they're on. Past a few hundred sources, an idea you highlighted is effectively lost unless you remember which PDF it's in. So I built the fix.

Cross-paper annotation browser

• Every highlight in your library in one window — not one PDF at a time.

• Filter by colour, tag, keyword, and type, combined live.

• Export the filtered set with citations — copy as Markdown/HTML or save as a standalone Zotero note, each source cited once in your Zotero citation style with its highlights beneath.

• Click any annotation to jump to that exact spot in the PDF.

Citavi-style idea layer

• Promote any highlight into a first-class idea — a real Zotero note, searchable and taggable on its own.

• Tag ideas, link them to each other, and link back to the source via Zotero relations.

• Browse the whole layer in its own tab, so your thinking is reachable independently of the paper it came from.

https://github.com/birugit/zotero-grounded-qa
It still does the original grounded Q&A: ask across one paper or several, and every claim is cited with a clickable page link that jumps to the source. No invented references. Bring your own model — Claude, GPT, DeepSeek, Grok, or local Ollama (no key, nothing leaves your machine).

Free, open source, Zotero 7+. It's built directly from researcher requests in this Zotero community thread: [reddit.com link]

I'd genuinely value feedback — especially from anyone who hits the silo problem daily, and whether the idea layer fits how you actually work. I'll be here all day.

#Productivity, #Education, #Open Source, #Artificial Intelligence, #Zotero