Citation Verifier
Verify scholarly references are real, correctly identified, and support claims.
Installation
- Make sure Claude is on your device and in your terminal.
Skills load from
~/.claude/skills/when Claude Code starts up — so you need it on your machine first. If you don't have it yet, install it once with the command below, then runclaudein any terminal to verify.One-time setupnpm i -g @anthropic-ai/claude-codeAlready have it? Skip ahead.
- Paste into Claude Code or into your terminal.
This copies the whole skill folder into
~/.claude/skills/light-citation-light0305/— the SKILL.md plus any scripts, reference docs, or templates the skill ships with. Safe default: works for every skill.Faster alternative (instruction-only skills)
Skips the clone and grabs only the SKILL.md file. Don't use this if the skill ships Python scripts, reference markdowns, or asset templates — they won't be downloaded and the skill will fail when it tries to load them.
Quick install (SKILL.md only)Sign up to copy - Restart Claude Code.
Quit and reopen Claude Code (or any other agent that loads from
~/.claude/skills/). New skills are picked up on startup. - Just ask Claude.
Skills auto-activate when your request matches the skill's description — no slash command needed. Trigger phrases live in the skill's own frontmatter; you can read them in the “What this skill does” section above.
Prefer to read the source first? Open on GitHub.
When Claude uses it
Verify scholarly references and claim-citation support for Light stage 10. Use when auditing a manuscript, claim map, bibliography, DOI/arXiv/PMID/ISBN/URL, BibTeX/CSL, citekeys, chimeric or fabricated citations, retraction/correction alerts, or preparing a canonical citation registry for typesetting. Builds provenance-preserving inventories, confirms metadata with independent authoritative sources, distinguishes CONFIRMED/CONFIRMED-MISSING/UNAVAILABLE/UNRESOLVED, records Crossref update direction, and emits the citation gate plus delivery artifacts.
What this skill does
Citation — stage 10
Make every author-used reference traceable, real, correctly identified, and honestly connected to the claim it is supposed to support. Treat formatting, metadata existence, publication-integrity facts, and semantic support as four different questions.
Read citation-resource-map.md before a full
manuscript audit. Read
references/registry_contract.md before
producing or consuming the canonical registry. Read
references/locator_audit.md before judging
claim support.
Stage contract
- Consume paper-writing's
light.paper_claims.v1, exact claim/source locators, current claim text hashes, reviewer-bound citation-support hashes, manuscript, figures/tables, supplement, and reference candidates. - Reuse literature-search provenance as input evidence; independently verify the references the author actually keeps.
- Emit
light.citation_registry.v1, BibTeX, CSL JSON, source-level evidence, failure records, claim-edge review, citekey audit, andlight.findings.v1(producer=citation). - Keep stage 10's only critical gate
citation_verify: confirmed missing works and chimeric citations. Metadata conflicts, unavailable sources, claim relevance, formatting, and publication-update alerts are warn/skip. - Fix citation failures inside stage 10.
ROUTEShas no key 10; never invent a back-edge. - Hand
references.bib,citekey-audit.json, registry anddelivery.jsonto typesetting. Typesetting compiles and checks keys; it does not re-decide authenticity.delivery.jsonmust declarestatusand per-deliverablesha256:hashes so typesetting can reject stale or edited handoffs.
Non-negotiable rules
- Never invent a reference, DOI, author, year, venue, citekey, locator or support verdict.
- Never call a network failure, rate limit, 5xx, authentication failure, or index miss “this work does not exist.”
- Assign
CONFIRMED-MISSINGonly when DOI Registration Agency explicitly reports non-existence and Crossref plus DataCite both return 404/410. - Assign
CONFIRMEDonly when registration metadata and at least one independent field source confirm the work. Otherwise retainUNAVAILABLEorUNRESOLVED. - Preserve every source's title/authors/year/venue/identifier value. Select canonical fields from the registration agency; never use fuzzy matching to overwrite the original citation.
- Treat a real DOI paired with conflicting title/authors/year as a possible chimeric citation. Multi-core-field conflict is critical; one ambiguous field mismatch is a warning for manual review.
- Read publication updates in the correct direction: the affected original
carries Crossref
updated-by; the notice carries inverseupdate-to. - Record retraction/correction/expression-of-concern facts and alerts, then hand integrity judgment and wording to research-ethics. Do not rebuild its ethics gate.
- Never equate metadata confirmation or “A cites B” with “B supports claim
C.”
SUPPORTSrequires a locator-backed semantic review. - Keep the core path local/free or public/no-key. OpenAlex and keyed Semantic Scholar are optional coverage enhancements; commercial managers, institutional databases, and browser plugins are never required.
Execute the author workflow
1. Inventory every reference occurrence
Use the claim map, manuscript, figures/tables and supplement together:
python scripts/citation_registry.py \
--claim-map claim_plan.json \
--draft paper.tex \
--figure figure_notes.md \
--supplement supplement.md \
--refs-spec citation_input.json \
--out-dir citation-delivery
Preserve claim_id, exact claim, claim locator, artifact path, occurrence
locator, citekey and raw identifier. Use
templates/citation_input.json when the
project has no reference spec.
2. Normalize without erasing versions
Normalize DOI, arXiv, PMID, ISBN and URL. Deduplicate exact works. Keep arXiv, accepted manuscript, versioned dataset and published DOI as explicit versions under one work only when the inputs establish the relationship. If not established, keep them separate and mark the relationship unresolved.
3. Verify with independent sources
python scripts/verify_refs.py \
--spec citation_input.json \
--self-author Smith \
--out verify.json
Use Crossref or DataCite as the registration source. Use PubMed, Semantic
Scholar, or configured OpenAlex as the independent field source. Keep each
endpoint, HTTP status, outcome, timestamp and returned fields in
source_evidence,并保存实际参与判定的 normalized-field SHA-256。Crossref polite-pool
email、OpenAlex/Semantic Scholar key 只用于请求,绝不写入 endpoint、registry 或日志。
Interpret status exactly:
| Status | Meaning | Action |
|---|---|---|
CONFIRMED | registration source + independent field source | eligible for canonical BibTeX/CSL |
CONFIRMED-MISSING | DOI RA explicit non-existence + Crossref/DataCite 404 | critical; replace or delete |
UNAVAILABLE | transport/rate/auth/5xx prevents lookup | retry or use another free source |
UNRESOLVED | partial evidence or second source incomplete | investigate; do not call verified |
4. Resolve field conflicts and chimeras
Compare the author's cited title, authors and year against registration
metadata. Inspect field_conflicts source by source. Keep the user's raw
citation unchanged until a human resolves the conflict.
Treat these as chimeric critical:
- real identifier plus conflicts in at least two of title/authors/year;
- title matches but the cited author list adds an author absent from the registered work.
Treat a single title translation, subtitle, year-online/year-print difference, author omission or ordering issue as metadata warning unless corroborating evidence establishes a chimera.
5. Record publication updates
Inspect publication_updates. Confirm relation direction with both the
affected work and notice DOI when the alert matters. Record type, notice DOI,
source and direction. Send those facts to research-ethics; do not label a
correction notice itself retracted because it has update-to.
6. Audit claim↔citation support
Use
templates/claim_citation_review.json
and the original full text:
supports: the cited locator supports the claim as written;partial: only a narrower statement is supported;related_only: same topic, but not evidence for this proposition;unsupported: the source contradicts or does not support it;review_required: full text/locator/reviewer is missing.
Each review must record access, a real non-placeholder source_locator,
source_evidence_sha256, reviewer, an already-occurred ISO reviewed_at, and
reviewed_claim_sha256 for the exact claim text that was reviewed. The registry
also emits the current claim_text_sha256; the two hashes must match, otherwise
the review is stale and is downgraded to REVIEW_REQUIRED. SUPPORTS without
those fields, with a future reviewed_at, with a template/absolute/escaping
locator, or with a mismatched claim hash is downgraded to REVIEW_REQUIRED by
the registry/gate; metadata-only access can never support a claim. If access is only ABSTRACT_ONLY, SUPPORTS also requires
support_scope=ABSTRACT_EXPLICIT or abstract_claim_explicit=true; otherwise
the registry/gate downgrades it to REVIEW_REQUIRED. Check direction,
population, intervention, comparator, metric, time, modality, causal strength
and scope. Change the claim or citation when related-only or unsupported. Do
not promote an abstract-level heuristic to final support.
Normalize the four gates explicitly before delivery:
python scripts/citation_four_gate.py \
--registry citation-delivery/citation-registry.json --as-of 2026-07-05
# 或仅调试模板合约:
python scripts/citation_four_gate.py \
--input templates/citation-four-gate.example.json --as-of 2026-07-05
The public template is intentionally UNKNOWN and must exit 1. A later gate
can never repair an earlier failure: existence → identity → directed
publication status → locator-backed claim support. Prefer --registry so the
four-gate records are derived from the canonical registry rather than a hand
copied template. ABSTRACT_ONLY may be
direct only when the declared claim is explicitly present in the abstract;
metadata alone never supports a claim. Retracted work may document historical
record but cannot silently support a current conclusion.
7. Generate and audit delivery
Run the registry online after inputs are complete:
python scripts/citation_registry.py \
--claim-map claim_plan.json --draft paper.tex \
--refs-spec citation_input.json --online \
--out-dir citation-delivery
python scripts/citekey_audit.py \
--tex paper.tex --bib citation-delivery/references.bib --json
Only confirmed, non-chimeric works enter generated BibTeX/CSL. Preserve every
failure and unresolved review in separate artifacts. The generated
delivery.json is DELIVERED only when citation-failures.json and
claim-citation-review.json are empty and the citekey audit is OK; otherwise
it exposes ERROR or REVIEW_REQUIRED. Use doi_to_any.py for one-off DOI
content negotiation and formatting, not as proof of semantic support.
8. Run the gate and stage checkpoint
python scripts/citation_verify_gate.py \
--registry citation-delivery/citation-registry.json \
--tex paper.tex --bib citation-delivery/references.bib \
--report citation_findings.json
python ../light-orchestrator/scripts/run_checkpoint.py \
--file .light/passport.yaml --stage 10 \
--findings citation_findings.json --write --ts <ISO-8601>
Expect citation_verify_gate.py to return exit 1 on a critical finding.
Repair the registry root cause, rebuild all derived artifacts, rerun the gate,
then rerun the same stage-10 checkpoint. Deliver only after the checkpoint
passes and passport records delivered.
Script map
| Script | Responsibility |
|---|---|
citation_registry.py | inventory, normalization, version grouping, verification orchestration, claim edges, registry/BibTeX/CSL/evidence/failure/delivery |
verify_refs.py | authoritative multi-source fields, honest status machine, source evidence, conflicts, chimeras, Crossref update direction |
citation_verify_gate.py | stage-10 findings producer; exit 1 on confirmed missing/chimeric |
citekey_audit.py | manuscript ↔ .bib key audit; reused by typesetting |
doi_to_any.py | DOI content negotiation and citation-format output |
verify_citation_edge.py | paper A→B open-index relation; never claim support |
citation_four_gate.py | ordered existence/identity/update/support contract with purpose-aware retraction handling; can derive records directly from light.citation_registry.v1 |
Resource boundaries
citation-resource-map.md: executable order and resource tiers.references/registry_contract.md: machine artifact semantics.references/locator_audit.md: human semantic-support protocol.references.md: API/style/reference-manager details; load only the relevant section.templates/*: author input and review contracts.assets/citation_checklist.md: final human checklist.docs/competitors/citation.md: R1 evidence and comparative claims, not an execution guide.
Completion check
- Inventory includes claim map, manuscript, figures/tables, supplement and reference spec provenance where present.
- DOI/arXiv/PMID/ISBN/URL are normalized; versions remain visible.
- Every confirmed work has registration plus independent source evidence.
- Every unavailable/unresolved source is honestly labeled.
- No confirmed-missing or chimeric work remains.
-
updated-bydirection is correct; notices are not inverted. - Every core claim citation has a locator-backed review; related-only is not
called support; every
SUPPORTSedge has source evidence SHA-256, reviewer, non-future reviewed_at, matchingclaim_text_sha256/reviewed_claim_sha256and non-metadata access, with no template/absolute/escaping locator. - Four-gate order passes; abstract/full-text access and historical/direct purpose are explicit.
- Four-gate input came from
--registryunless there is a documented reason to use a hand-written fixture. - Registry, BibTeX, CSL, evidence, failures, claim review and citekey audit were generated from one canonical state.
-
delivery.jsonrecords status plussha256:hashes for every deliverable consumed by typesetting. - citation gate and stage-10 checkpoint pass.
- typesetting consumed the delivered BibTeX/citekeys.
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