This all makes sense, thank you. The friction-free aspect of browser windows is still pretty critical to my workflow, but I'll look into whether it makes sense to grow the habit of "migrating" a task to Zotero when it gets heavy-duty enough.
I first discovered Zotero via the Mozilla add-ons search whilst looking for an extension to help me. Using the Firefox/Chromium connector puts it a context-click away:
Zotero Connector > Save To Zotero > "Web Page with Snapshot" / "Web Page without Snapshot"
So I can both maintain the tab workflow whilst 'tracking' progress with Zotero application itself.
