Discussion: Plugin Access Modes & Chat-with-Papers Feature

[Simon101511]

Update: Clarified Core Objective & Chat-First Paradigm

Core Objective (confirmed 2025-07-28):
Allow postgraduate students to “chat with the papers in their Zotero database” via a seamless in-application plugin. All operations (semantic search, citation exploration, clustering & visualization, iterative refinement) should be triggerable from a chat-style interface within Zotero, requiring zero coding or external apps.

Key Access Modes (two options):

1. Embedded UI plugin: menu/sidebar inside Zotero desktop client.
2. API-based external app: connect to Zotero’s local database via its API from a separate lightweight GUI.

Next Step:
– Draft low-fidelity wireframes showing the chat interface and task flows.