Zotero Paper Fetcher (Automator)

This script automates saving an academic paper (or any URL) to Zotero using the official Zotero Connector Google Chrome extension, driven by Playwright in Python.

Why this approach?

Zotero Connector is a Chrome extension that provides the official, most robust way of getting high-quality metadata and full-text PDFs (if proxy or site access allows). However, standard browser automation (Headless Chrome) blocks Chrome extensions from running.

This script elegantly solves the problem by:

1. Automatically downloading the latest Zotero Connector extension.
2. Unpacking it from its .crx format.
3. Launching Chromium using Playwright in --headless=new mode (which DOES allow extensions, unlike the old headless mode) with a persistent user data directory.
4. Auto-closing setup tabs.
5. Emulating the official Zotero Connector keyboard shortcut (e.g. Cmd+Shift+S on Mac) once the page is fully loaded.

Prerequisites

1. Python 3.8+ installed.
2. Zotero Desktop must be currently running on your machine (the extension communicates with the Zotero desktop app securely on port 1969).

Setup

First, initialize your virtual environment and install dependencies:

python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt
playwright install chromium

Usage

Simply pass the URL of the paper you want to add to Zotero:

source venv/bin/activate
python zotero_automator.py "https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762"

If you want to watch the browser process visually (helpful for debugging if a site requires a captcha or login, or just to verify the extension is working), pass the --headed flag:

python zotero_automator.py "https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762" --headed

How It Works

• setup_extension(): Locates the EKHAGK... identifier for the Zotero extension on the Chrome web store and downloads the raw .crx payload. It unpacks the contents into ./zotero_extension/.
• save_to_zotero(): Starts an async_playwright session pointing to a local profile folder (./chrome_profile/). The extension injects its translator scripts on network idle. We fire the platform-specific shortcut for "Save to Zotero" and wait 10 seconds for the backend download to finish.