Quickstart
Introduction
PapersGPT is a Zotero AI plugin powered by almost all the SOTA(State Of The Art) LLMs for reading and understanding papers in Zotero, especially for serious study and work scenarios.
Download PapersGPT
Download here for Zotero 7.
Installation
Open Zotero in the top menu bar, click on Tools - Plugins.
Click on the gear icon at the top right of the window.
Click on Install Plugin From File... and open the downloaded plugin file ending with .xpi.
Start/Close PapersGPT
There is a PapersGPT icon on the top left of main window and PDF view in Zotero. You can press on it to start PapersGPT.
In Zotero, when you are reading a paper, press the keys to start the plugin as your will: MacOS(command + enter), Windows(ctrl + enter).
When you don't need PapersGPT, just click the 'X' button to close the window.
Select LLMs
ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, Claude ,OpenRouter, SiliconFlow, Qwen, Mistral, Kimi and GLM can all be accessed and switched by one click.
Besides the above excellent business models, Gemma 3, Qwen 3, DeepSeek, GPT-OSS, Phi-4, and Mistral can all be choosed by just one click in plugin without manualy installing many boring additional tools or softwares. More importantly, they are all free.
API KEY Configuration
When using ChatGPT, DeepSeek, Claude or Gemini, remember to set your own API KEY.
For example, if you want to use gpt-5 or other gpt serial models, you should set your own OpenAI key, so as to the usage of DeepSeek, Claude, Gemini and other LLMs.
Now chatgpt, deepseek, claude and gemini serial models are all supported. Besides the above models, in the selection of 'Customized', Qwen, Mistral, Kimi and Z.ai are supported too. Models hubs, such as OpenRouter and SiliconFlow, are supported.
How to buy API KEY from models' vendors
Please notice that you should buy API KEY from the models' vendors.
For OpenAI, please see here: https://platform.openai.com/api-keys
For Gemini: https://ai.google.dev/api
For Claude: https://docs.anthropic.com/en/api/overview
For DeepSeek: https://api-docs.deepseek.com
For OpenRouter: https://openrouter.ai/docs/quickstart
For Qwen: https://qwen.ai/apiplatform
For Mistral: https://docs.mistral.ai/api/
For Kimi: https://platform.moonshot.ai/docs/introduction#getting-an-api-key
For Z.ai: https://z.ai/manage-apikey/apikey-list
For SiliconFlow: https://docs.siliconflow.com/en/userguide/quickstart
How to use local LLM
If you are Premium or Business users of PapersGPT, you can select the "local LLM" option in the PapersGPT, no API KEY would be needed, all the available SOTA open source models are shown here! Now gpt-oss-20b, Gemma3, DeepSeek-Distill-Qwen3, Qwen 3, and Phi can all be choosed by just one click in plugin without manualy installing many boring additional tools or softwares. The selected LLM will be downloaded and deployed automatically for the first time, you can get the download process status from the ‘process bar’. Then enjoy it.
Use other LLMs by 'Customized' selection
If you want to use a LLM which is not integrated in the PapersGPT, you can try 'Customized'.
Here is a manual config steps for OpenAI, you can take it as reference.
Step 1. Select the item of 'Customized'
Step 2. Fill the three lines.
line 1: https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions
line 2: model name
line 3: input API KEY
Ask any questions related to this paper
Open the file you want to chat, after starting the plugin, select the LLM, then chat pdf.
Click the ‘paper aeroplane’ button on the right to chat with it. The responses reference the relevant pieces of the original document.
Here are some examples what you can ask:
"What’s the main argument in this research paper?"
"Can you explain the steps in this process?"
"Summarize the main points in this essay."
Below is the answer of your question.
Ask the common questions with buttons quickly
You can also ask the common questions quickly with buttons to get a general idea of your paper.
PapersGPT provide 6 buttons for quick common questions,click the buttons to chat pdf and get a general idea.
