Research Buddy

What it is

A Zotero 7 add-on that adds a chat panel to the item pane and the PDF reader. It sends the paper's extracted text, metadata, abstract and the user's highlights to Claude and streams the answer back, with follow-up memory per paper.

The problem

Reading papers means flipping between the PDF and a separate chat tool and re-pasting context each time.

How it works

1. TypeScript bootstrapped Zotero plugin packaged as an .xpi
2. A reader module pulls metadata, PDF full text and annotations through Zotero's internal APIs, read-only
3. Claude API client with SSE streaming; model and max tokens are set in preferences
4. Framework-free DOM chat UI; conversation resets when the selected paper changes

Stack

Disciplines

For your business

Embed an LLM assistant inside the tools a team already uses, grounded in their own documents.