After using the Zotero → Export Bibliography → Create Literature Note using Citation → Zotfile to extract annotations → MDNotes to extract annotations to MD → Copy paste from temporary MD file into Literature Note pathway that I’ve seen posted, I dug into MDNotes a bit more, and found it’s easier to export the whole entry including annotations direct from Zotero. This means I don’t have to keep the .bib file up to date, and it’s a single click to generate everything from Zotero. To set this up, I used the Templates doc for MDNotes https://argentinaos.com/zotero-mdnotes/docs/advanced/templates/defaults and made a Mdnotes Default Template.md that mimics the Citations Literature Note entry like this:
---
title: "%(title)"
authors: [%(author)]
year: %(date)
type: %(itemType)
citekey: %(citekey)
alias:
- "%(title)"
---
{{title}}
{{author}}
(%(publicationTitle), %(date))
%(pdfAttachments) (%(localLibrary))
{{abstractNote}}
{{url}}
@%(citekey), %(DOI)
{{collections}}
{{tags}}, #zotero, #literature-notes, #reference
## Notes
## Quotes
with a Zotero Note Template.md that looks like this:
{{noteContent}}
The trick I needed was setting up the MDNotes preferences (Tools → MDNotes) to export everything as a single file, straight into a papers folder in my Vault, with the right filename.
Now, I can Read/Annotate a paper, click Extract Annotations and then MDNotes->Create Full Export Note, and it’s all there in Obsidian. It’s not perfect - still working through the fields in MDNotes, but it’s much quicker than making temp files and reloading Obsidian.