Prerequisites

Get these in place before installing anything else.

Word installed

If you plan to write in Word, install it before Zotero. The Zotero Word plugin only registers itself if Word is already on the machine.

LaTeX users: skip this and ignore Word references throughout.

A project folder

You will need somewhere on disk to keep the vault. The layout below is one suggestion — not required by anything in BibFlow. The vault works equally well sitting on its own anywhere; this structure just keeps research, drafts, and figures alongside the notes.

~/Documents/Masterarbeit/
├── 00_Admin/
├── 01_Literature/
├── 02_Notes/        ← the Obsidian vault will go here
├── 03_Experiments/
├── 04_Analysis/
├── 05_Figures/
├── 06_Thesis/
└── 07_Presentation/

Numbered prefixes hold the order in Finder. Substitute your own structure if you prefer.

A GitHub account

Free at github.com/signup. The free tier is enough.

Git on your machine

macOS, in Terminal:

xcode-select --install

If it says “already installed”, you are done. Otherwise accept the install dialog.