Citation Graph

Turn your literature into a citation graph on an Obsidian canvas: papers as nodes, citations as arrows, laid out on a timeline by year.

Features

• Build a canvas from a Zotero collection or tag, or add papers one at a time by DOI or arXiv ID. Each paper gets a literature note.
• Grow it with any paper's references and citing works, filtered by year and keyword, and sorted by citations, year, title or the order the paper cites them.
• Track your reading: every paper shows its status (to read, reading, read, abandoned) as a coloured border.
• Download PDFs from arXiv into a vault folder.
• Summarize papers with an LLM, written straight into the note.
• Get recommendations: an LLM suggests papers that belong on the canvas, and each one is checked against a citation database before you see it.

Desktop only. Requires Obsidian 1.13.0 or later.

Quick start

1. Install Citation Graph from Settings, Community plugins, and enable it.
2. Start Zotero and enable its local API: Edit, Settings, Advanced, tick Allow other applications on this computer to communicate with Zotero. (Better BibTeX is recommended for citekeys.)
3. Run Citation Graph: Canvas: create from collection from the command palette and pick a collection.
4. Select a paper and run Papers: expand paper to add its references and citing works.
5. Put Reading: cycle reading status on a hotkey to mark papers as you read them.

Every per-paper command is also on the right-click menu of a canvas node. No Zotero? Start from any canvas with Papers: add by DOI or arXiv.

Optional setup

To use	You need
Faster citation lookups	A free Semantic Scholar API key. Without one, a large collection takes minutes
Summaries and recommendations	A provider under Settings, Summaries (see below)
PDF downloads	A vault folder under Default download folder, or pick one when downloading
Syncing back to Zotero	A Zotero API key and user ID from zotero.org/settings/keys

LLM providers.

• Claude CLI (default) uses your Claude subscription instead of an API key. Install Claude Code and sign in once by running claude in a terminal. The plugin finds it in ~/.local/bin or on your PATH; otherwise set Claude CLI path.
• Anthropic, OpenAI or Google Gemini API: paste your API key. These bill you per call.

Keeping PDFs out of git or Sync. PDFs are stored in your vault. Add the download folder to your .gitignore, or to Excluded folders in Obsidian Sync's settings.

Commands

Command	What it does
Canvas: create from collection / from tag	Builds a canvas from Zotero
Canvas: resolve missing citation edges	Draws arrows still missing between papers on the canvas
Canvas: relayout	Re-sorts nodes by year
Canvas: sync to Zotero	Pushes the canvas's papers to a Zotero collection
Canvas: send papers to another canvas	Copies or moves papers with their arrows
Papers: expand paper	Adds a paper's references and citing works
Papers: add by DOI or arXiv	Adds one paper
Papers: recommend papers	Asks the LLM for papers that fit the canvas
Papers: delete paper	Deletes the node, its arrows and its note
Reading: set / cycle / refresh reading status	Sets or repaints reading status
PDFs: download	Fetches PDFs from arXiv
PDFs: write summary	Writes an LLM summary into the note
Maintenance: clear Semantic Scholar cache	Drops cached citation data

Privacy and costs

• No telemetry. Each service is contacted only by the command that needs it: the Zotero app on your computer, Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref and arXiv for paper data, zotero.org for sync, and your chosen LLM provider for summaries and recommendations.
• Vault only. The plugin reads and writes files only inside your vault.
• One local program. With the Claude CLI provider, the plugin runs your installed claude binary, only for summaries and recommendations, without a shell, and with only the tools the request needs. Choose an API provider and no program is ever run.
• Costs. The plugin is free. Summaries and recommendations bill your LLM account or Claude subscription; everything else works without one.

More

• Full guide: every command, setting and behaviour, exactly what is sent to each service, limitations, and development.
• Changelog · Contributing · License: MIT