Annotations

Beaver reads the PDFs in your Zotero library and adds highlight and note annotations for you, just ask. Tell it what you're looking for in plain language, and it finds the relevant passages, marks them up, groups them by color, and tags them so you can pull them back up later.

Because Beaver is a Zotero plugin, everything it creates is a real Zotero annotation. It lives in your reader, syncs with your library, and works with every Zotero feature you already use.

Beaver annotation tool — Beaver proposes color-coded, tagged annotations for you to review

Creating annotations

Ask Beaver to annotate the paper you're reading using natural language. It works for both narrow, specific requests and broad, judgment-based ones:

Highlight the key findings in this paper

Add notes explaining the technical terms

Highlight everything relevant to my project on labor markets

Help me skim this paper by marking the most important passages

Beaver identifies the passages that match your request and proposes the full set of annotations. Nothing is written to your library until you review and approve it.

Organize your annotations by color or tag

Use color and tags to organize your annotations. Just tell Beaver your preferences (or add them to your custom prompt in settings) and it follows your lead.

Color is great for separating themes or topics. Hand Beaver a scheme using any of Zotero's standard annotation colors and it applies it consistently:

Highlight the methods in blue, the results in yellow, and the conclusions in green

Tags make annotations findable across your library. Beaver applies the tags you ask for, so they stay consistent with the system you already use in Zotero:

Highlight every definition of social capital across this collection and add the tag social-capital

Later, both color and tags become search filters so that Beaver can find each group of annotations when you ask. See Finding annotations below.

Annotation types

Beaver can create two types of annotations: highlights and notes.

Highlights mark text with a colored background. Each highlight can carry an optional comment, so you can record why a passage matters right where it sits.

Highlights mark text with a colored background. Each highlight can carry an optional comment, and Beaver can fill it in for you when you ask. Comments can include a short note on what the passage says, why it matters, how it fits into the overall argument, or other details you want to record.

Notes are standalone comments anchored to a precise location. Beaver places them at the exact sentence they refer to, or at a section heading. They're useful for:

Explaining complex concepts in simpler terms
Adding questions to follow up on
Recording your thoughts or connections to other work
Summarizing a section for future reference
Comparing and contrasting a passage with other research in your library

For richer note requests, Beaver can pull in context from across your library:

Add note annotations identifying the key definitions, and compare each one to how other papers in my library define it

Finding annotations

Beaver can search annotations across your entire library, not just the document you're reading.

Show me all blue annotations from the last week

Summarize all annotations tagged follow-up

Find my notes that mention regression discontinuity

List all annotations in my Dissertation collection with the tag 'social-capital'

You can search by:

Highlighted text or comment content
Tag and color
Annotation type (highlight, underline, or note)
Author, attachment, and collection
Creation or modification date

Reusable Actions

If you annotate the same way across papers (highlighting key findings using colors, marking passages relevant to a project, adding notes that explain technical terms) you don't have to retype the instructions each time. Define the task once as an action and reapply it whenever you need it.

Actions appear based on what you're doing in Zotero, so you can trigger an annotation action from the slash menu in chat, from the Beaver home screen, by right-clicking an item in your Zotero library, or from the Beaver toolbar icon in the PDF reader. Beaver ships with built-in actions like Highlight key findings, and you can create your own for the annotation tasks you repeat most.

Learn more in the actions guide.

You Stay in Control

When Beaver creates annotations, all changes require your approval by default. Nothing is added to your library until you confirm. Review the proposed annotations, then Apply to add them or Reject to discard them. Applied annotations remain fully editable in your Zotero reader.

You can configure this behavior in Beaver settings:

Always ask (default): Review every proposed annotation before it's applied
Auto-apply: Trust Beaver to add annotations automatically
Continue without applying: Let Beaver propose annotations that you can review and apply later