zcite is a from-scratch reference manager in Rust — a Tauri v2 desktop app behind a cyberpunk HUD, modeled on Zotero. Its engine is extracted as zcite-core, a pure-Rust crate carrying the Zotero item-type schema, a typed library of items/collections/tags, saved searches, a citation & bibliography formatter (APA/MLA/Chicago/IEEE), BibTeX/RIS/CSL-JSON/EndNote-XML/MODS/MARCXML/Zotero-RDF import-export, DOI/ISBN/PMID/arXiv lookup and duplicate detection — all behind one JSON command surface. The same engine embeds across the MenkeTechnologies GUI stack. Paid product, in active development.
Library
Typed items across all 37 Zotero reference types (with base-field renames), standalone notes, nested collections, colored tags, related items, trash + restore — partitioned into My Library plus group libraries, persisted as a single versioned JSON store with a migration path.
Acquire
Add references by DOI (CrossRef), ISBN (Open Library), PMID (NCBI) or arXiv id, or by retrieving metadata from a PDF (DOI/arXiv/ISBN recognized in the text). Import + export BibTeX, RIS, CSL-JSON, EndNote XML, MODS, MARCXML and Zotero RDF, by paste or file — or pull a library from a Zotero account (Web API) and sync attachment files over WebDAV.
Cite
Bibliographies and in-text citations in APA, MLA, Chicago (author-date + notes-bibliography) and IEEE — or any loaded .csl stylesheet via the built-in CSL processor — plus BibTeX cite-key generation, formatted in the engine, identical across hosts.
Find
Quick search across every field (incl. indexed text/HTML/PDF attachments), saved searches with date and collection operators, and duplicate detection + merge.
Honest coverage
The engine's coverage against the full Zotero feature surface is hand-assessed conservatively in scripts/port_features.tsv and audited against the real source — FULL/PARTIAL claims are grep-verified and OVERCLAIMs flagged. See the port report (currently 95.0% weighted, 0 overclaim flags) and the engineering report for the module map, command surface and test status.