Ad Marginem vs Zotero

Two tools, two philosophies, one set of users tired of choosing.

Where Ad Marginem leads

• Marginalia as a first-class object. Highlights, sticky notes, and pencil annotations are core data, not Zotero's PDF-attachment afterthought.
• Local-first sync. Your library works offline; conflicts surface in a UI, not a "your data is gone" page.
• Modern editor. Inline citations + wiki-links in notes + a Word add-in built this decade.

Where Zotero still wins

• Decades of community translators. Zotero captures more publisher sites than Ad Marginem currently does (21 sites at launch).
• Plugin ecosystem. Zotero plugins are an established surface; we don't have one yet.
• Free + open-source. Zotero is free for everyone; Ad Marginem is free for local-only use but charges for sync.

Migrating

Zotero RDF / BibTeX imports are supported (P0.6 ships the hardened parser). You can move your library in one file. Your annotations come over too, as long as Zotero exported them.