Daily workflow

Six steps per paper.

1. Capture

Browser → click the Zotero Connector button on the paper page. Zotero saves metadata and PDF.

2. Read & annotate

Open the PDF in Zotero. Highlight:

Yellow for claims, facts, useful prose.
Green for terms and definitions to remember.

Add inline comments to highlights for reactions or open questions.

Zoteros built-in PDF reader, with yellow general highlights and green key-term highlights ready for import.

3. Import to Obsidian

Cmd+Shift+I (or Option+T → Import Paper from Zotero) → search title → Enter.

Zotero Integrations import modal in Obsidian — start typing the title to fuzzy-search your library.

Creates 1 Literature/.md with metadata, highlights split by colour, and empty synthesis blocks.

The freshly-imported literature note: frontmatter, abstract, highlights grouped by colour, and empty persist blocks ready for synthesis.

4. Synthesise

Fill the persist blocks in your own words:

Block	Content
Summary	3–5 sentences: what the paper does
Key findings	bulleted concrete results
Connections	wikilinks to other papers and concept notes
Open questions	what you did not understand, what to investigate

Highlights are raw input. The synthesis is yours, and it survives Zotero re-imports.

Tip. When a green-highlighted key term deserves its own atomic note, select it and run Promote selection to concept note from the Launcher. One keystroke creates 2 Wiki/Concept Notes/<term>.md from the Concept Note template and replaces the selection with [[<term>]]. See Templater commands for details.

5. Cite in your draft

Word: Zotero toolbar → Add Citation → search → insert. LaTeX: \parencite{citekey}. Same citekey thats in Obsidian.

6. Backup

Nothing manual. Obsidian Git auto-commits every 30 minutes and pushes to your private GitHub repo.