Bulk-tag by topic

The problem

You want to tag a large collection by topic — #method, #theory, #case-study — but Zotero only lets you drag tags onto items one at a time. There’s no “classify these 300 items and tag them” button, and doing it by hand is exactly the tedium people automate away.

Via an AI agent

“Read every item in Literature review, classify each as theory, method, or case study from its title and abstract, and tag it accordingly. Show me the proposed tags for the first 5, then apply to all — undoably.”

The agent reads titles and abstracts, decides a tag per item, previews a sample, and applies the tags in a snapshotted batch. You confirm the scheme; the CLI writes it.

Via the CLI

For a known set of items, zot tag add is direct:

zot tag add method ABCD1234 EFGH5678 IJKL9012 --yes
zot tag rename "case study" --new case-study --yes   # tidy an existing tag
zot tag normalize --dry-run                           # fold case/space variants

For classification at scale, drive it through zot apply so it’s one undoable operation. Export the collection, decide a tag per item, and emit JSONL:

zot export "Literature review" --format json --out lit.json

{"key":"ABCD1234","addTags":["theory"]}
{"key":"EFGH5678","addTags":["method"]}
{"key":"IJKL9012","addTags":["case-study"]}

zot apply tags.jsonl --dry-run
zot apply tags.jsonl

Safety net

zot backup
zot apply tags.jsonl --dry-run     # preview the tag assignments
zot apply tags.jsonl               # snapshots first
zot undo last                      # remove them all if the scheme was off

Tagging is additive and fully reversible via zot undo. Run zot tag normalize afterward to catch any near-duplicate tags (Case Study vs case-study) before they proliferate.