Fallbacks

Common fallback strategies

zot is not installed

In a development environment, use:

cargo run -q -p zot-cli -- --json doctor

Write access is missing

Stay in read-only mode and explicitly report missing:

• ZOT_API_KEY
• ZOT_LIBRARY_ID

If the user explicitly wants the environment fixed, start with:

• zot config show
• zot config init
• zot config set

Better BibTeX is unavailable

library citekey can only fall back to the Extra field. Do not pretend the BBT RPC path succeeded.

No PDF backend is available

Do not promise PDF text extraction, outlines, or annotation creation.

Embeddings are unavailable

Continue with:

• workspace query --mode bm25
• or library search
• or let hybrid degrade naturally

attach-mode auto found no PDF

The item may still be created successfully. Report that no open-access PDF was found instead of treating the whole command as failed.

The user provided a parent item key instead of an attachment key

Say that the attachment key is still missing first.

When needed, inspect:

• item children
• then decide whether item download is possible

zot mcp serve

It is not usable yet, so do not design workflows around it.