| FMRS | 69 / 100 · C | 75 / 100 · B |
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| Reliability | 11 / 20 | 12 / 20 |
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| Security and permissions | 13 / 20 | 16 / 20 |
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| Maintenance | 15 / 20 | 14 / 20 |
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| Documentation | 16 / 20 | 18 / 20 |
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| Setup experience | 14 / 20 | 15 / 20 |
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| Best for | - Researchers, students, and academics who want to integrate their Zotero library with AI assistants.
- Users who need quick retrieval, summarization, and annotation of papers.
- Those looking for semantic search to discover related research.
- Users who want to automate library management tasks like bulk adding and deduplication.
| - Individuals or teams who prioritise privacy and offline operation and do not want data leaving the machine
- Users who share memory across multiple MCP clients such as Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Hermes Agent, OpenClaw, Cursor, Codex and Gemini CLI
- Scenarios that need encrypted storage, a hash-chained audit log and verifiable vault migration
- Users who want low-latency recall, a bundled embedding model and no extra LLM calls inside the memory layer
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| Not for | - Users who don't need AI integration and just want a terminal interface (use zotero-cli).
- Users who don't use Zotero.
- Users who require fully offline operation without local Zotero installation (web API mode still needs internet).
| - Users who need cloud multi-device sync or a hosted team memory service; moving between machines means locking the vault and copying the file
- Users who expect the server itself to run an LLM that extracts facts and decides what to remember; Compartment explicitly keeps no LLM inside and leaves that to the host model
- Users who cannot keep a passphrase safe or who need a recovery path if it is lost, since Compartment never generates a password, seed or recovery phrase
- Deployments that require network transports such as SSE or streamable-http; this server is stdio only and opens no ports
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| Required permissions | - Reads local Zotero database files (default path).
- Writes to Zotero via Web API in hybrid mode (add, update, delete items).
- Accesses Zotero attachment files (e.g., PDFs) to extract full text and annotations.
- When semantic search is enabled, calls embedding model APIs (e.g., OpenAI, Gemini) and stores index data.
- When scite tools are enabled, calls scite.ai public API.
| - Read and write the vault file under the user's home directory, by default ~/.compartment/memory.vault, and its sibling settings file
- Access the session directory holding the unlock credential (configurable with COMPARTMENT_SESSION_DIR), which also carries the shared embedding process's Unix socket
- Optionally use the macOS keychain (compartment unlock --keychain is an explicit opt-in, and it survives reboots)
- Write or merge an mcpServers entry into each MCP client's own configuration file, taking a byte-exact backup first
- Install a PostToolUse hook for Claude Code that captures memory files the agent writes
- Serve a read-only dashboard on 127.0.0.1 behind a one-time random URL token
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| Risks and side effects | - AI assistants may misinterpret or misread library data; verify important information manually.
- Web API mode requires a Zotero API key; if compromised, unauthorized access to your library is possible.
- Semantic search indexes may contain sensitive content; protect stored embeddings.
- Enabled optional tool groups (e.g., scite) trigger external network requests.
| - A leaked passphrase means the encrypted content can be decrypted; Compartment generates no recovery phrase and cannot recover a lost passphrase
- Enabling the memory_unlock tool places the passphrase in the model's context, which is why it is off by default
- If a 2FA keyfile is lost, for example a USB stick, the vault cannot be opened even with the passphrase
- `export --plaintext` writes the vault as unencrypted JSONL, so that file must be handled carefully
- Memory content can come from untrusted sources; recall wraps memories with a notice that they are stored data and content can be marked quarantined, but the host agent must still treat memory as data to limit prompt-injection risk
- The capture hook and client integration write into the user's own settings files, although the implementation backs up and merges rather than replacing
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| Supported clients | Claude Desktop, Claude Code, ChatGPT, Cherry Studio | Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Hermes Agent, OpenClaw, Cursor, VS Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Cline, Roo Code, Zed, OpenCode, LM Studio, AnythingLLM, BoltAI, Goose, Kiro |
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| Tools | 37 | 14 |
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