| name | backing-claims |
| description | Back factual and empirical claims with literature you have verified actually supports the claim, and record each citation's provenance (how found, why picked, quote). Use proactively when: (1) adding OR reusing a citation, page number, or attribution for a factual/empirical claim in prose, .tex, .nw, or notes — including a cite carried over from slides, notes, a draft, or the existing .bib (an inherited citation is NOT pre-verified), (2) writing prose that attributes a claim to a source or recounts an example ("X reports/found that…", a paraphrase, or a page locator), (3) the user asks to "find a reference", "cite this", or "is this citation correct", (4) writing a related-work, background, or claims section, (5) the user mentions scholar, BibTeX, DOI, arXiv, OpenAlex, Crossref, or a literature search, (6) reviewing a .bib for unsupported references. Trigger BEFORE writing the citation. Complements writing-crypto and latex-writing (citation markup); this skill owns finding/verifying/justifying the reference.
|
Backing Claims with Verified References
Back every claim with scientific literature you have read and verified, and
record how you got there. A citation is a load-bearing claim: it asserts that
a specific source supports a specific statement. This skill makes that assertion
auditable.
Core principle
Never cite from memory, from a title, or from a search-result snippet. Open
the source, find the passage that supports the claim, and record it. A reference
that is merely about the same topic is not support — the quote must entail the
specific claim, at the claim's scope and strength.
Corollary: the search tool is free, the documentation is not. Use any source
you like — scholar, Google Scholar, a publisher database, WebSearch, a
colleague's tip — but every reference must carry a reproducible FOUND-VIA.
Corollary: an inherited citation is not a verified one. A key that already
exists in the .bib, or one carried over from slides, notes, a draft, or an
earlier version, asserts support you have not personally checked. Verify it
against the source the first time you commit it to prose — and re-verify every
page number and every "X reports/found/shows that…" attribution you
write, since those are fresh claims even when the citation key is old. "The
cite was already there" is not evidence that it is correct. Trigger this skill
while writing the sentence, not only when a reviewer later asks.
This skill owns find → verify → record. It hands the citation markup off to
writing-crypto (biblatex \autocite/\ac) and latex-writing (\cite
family). Do not duplicate that guidance here.
The find → verify → record protocol
1. State the claim precisely
Write the claim as one sentence and note its scope (population, domain),
strength (does it say causes, correlates, can, always?), and whether
it needs a primary source (an original finding/definition) or a survey
(an established consensus). The reference must match all three.
2. Find — prefer scholar, but any source counts
scholar is preferred because it records the query for you and searches several
databases at once. See references/scholar-cookbook.md for the non-interactive
recipes (search, rq, enrich, verify, prov, providers, syntax,
notes, pdf).
scholar search "authenticated encryption generic composition" -p s2 -p dblp -f bibtex
scholar rq "How do LLMs support novice programming?" -p openalex -p dblp --count 20
To get the BibTeX already wrapped in provenance blocks with FOUND-VIA
pre-filled from the query, use -f bibtex+prov (this is the easiest start —
you then fill in CLAIM/PICKED/QUOTE/VERIFIED):
scholar search "authenticated encryption generic composition" -p s2 -p dblp -f bibtex+prov
Any complementary source is allowed (Google Scholar, a publisher site, WebSearch
- WebFetch, Crossref/DOI lookup, the
deep-research skill for hard/contested
claims). Whatever you use, capture the query/source verbatim so FOUND-VIA
can be reproduced. references/scholar-cookbook.md shows how to phrase each
source's FOUND-VIA line.
scholar snowball, scholar tuxedo, and scholar search --review are
interactive TUIs — do not drive them from an agent; use the non-interactive
subcommands instead.
3. Screen and pick
Compare the top results and record why this one: primary source vs survey,
canonical/most-cited, reputable venue, appropriate year, closest match to the
claim's scope. When the choice is non-obvious, note the alternatives you
rejected and why — that reasoning is the PICKED field.
4. Verify applicability (the double-check)
Read the actual source, not just the title:
scholar enrich "<session>"
scholar pdf open "<pdf-url>"
scholar pdf quote "<pdf-url>" --claim "<the claim>"
scholar verify "<session>"
scholar pdf quote proposes candidate supporting passages (with location) — the
judgement stays yours; read the passage and confirm it entails the claim.
scholar verify runs the currency/retraction test for you via Crossref.
Extract a verbatim passage that supports the claim, and apply the tests in
references/verification-checklist.md (scope/strength match, primary vs
secondary "citation of a citation", over-claiming, contested/retracted work,
predatory venue, quote actually entails the claim). If the source does not
genuinely support the claim, discard it and return to step 2 — do not weaken the
quote to fit. Escalate hard or contested claims to the deep-research skill.
5. Record provenance, then emit the citation
Write the provenance comment block immediately above the BibTeX entry, then
write the citation in the project's style (defer to writing-crypto /
latex-writing). Full schema and worked examples:
references/provenance-format.md.
% === provenance: BellareNamprempre2000 ===
% CLAIM: Authenticated encryption provides both confidentiality and integrity.
% FOUND-VIA: scholar search "authenticated encryption generic composition" -p s2 -p dblp
% PICKED: canonical, most-cited primary source that defines the notion (not a survey).
% QUOTE (§1): "an authenticated encryption scheme ... provides both privacy and authenticity"
% VERIFIED: full-text PDF read; applies because it defines AE as exactly C+I.
% DATE: 2026-06-24
@inproceedings{BellareNamprempre2000, ... }
Required fields: CLAIM, FOUND-VIA, PICKED, QUOTE, VERIFIED
(DATE recommended). You do not have to type the skeleton by hand:
scholar search "..." -f bibtex+prov
scholar prov found-via "<paper-id>"
scholar prov export refs.bib --in-place
scholar prov import refs.bib
Validate any .bib you touch:
scripts/check_provenance.py refs.bib
scripts/check_metadata.py refs.bib [...]
Self- and companion-references are references too. Author names and
metadata for the user's own or companion papers are copied from the source
repo's \author{} block, never written from memory — a fabricated
co-author name is the canonical failure here. After any bib work, run
check_metadata.py over the touched files; treat diacritic and subtitle
differences as benign, investigate everything else.
Mirror the searches into a paper appendix
When the citations belong to a paper, the FOUND-VIA records must also
surface as a search-and-verification protocol appendix in the paper
itself (like vt-prog-misconceptions' literature-protocol.tex and
vt-debug's search-protocol.tex): one paragraph or list per search
episode, with the verbatim queries, the date, the source/API used, what
was retained, and — equally important — what was discarded as
unverifiable or substituted. State the find→verify→record protocol once
at the top and point to the per-reference provenance blocks in the .bib.
Run each round's searches under one named scholar session per paper
(search -n, decisions via sessions decide) and commit the session's
sessions export output (bib/csv/latex) to the paper repo (e.g.
literature-review/) — the exported session is the appendix's audit
record.
Update the appendix in the same commit as the search; a search that is only
recorded in bib comments is not yet documented.
Anti-patterns
| ✗ Wrong | ✓ Right |
|---|
| Cite a paper by its title or abstract snippet. | Read the source; paste the verbatim QUOTE that supports the claim. |
| Cite a survey for a specific primary finding. | Cite the primary source; use surveys only for "it is well established that…". |
QUOTE is on-topic but doesn't entail the claim. | QUOTE matches the claim's scope and strength, or pick a better source. |
| No record of how the paper was found. | FOUND-VIA records the exact, reproducible query/source. |
| Over-claim beyond what the source shows. | Match the claim's strength to the evidence, or soften the prose. |
Reference files
| File | Content | Search patterns |
|---|
references/provenance-format.md | Full provenance schema, field semantics, worked examples, migrating a scholar rq session into FOUND-VIA | FOUND-VIA, QUOTE, VERIFIED, multi-line |
references/verification-checklist.md | Applicability tests for deciding whether a source really supports a claim | scope, primary vs secondary, over-claim, retraction, venue |
references/scholar-cookbook.md | Non-interactive scholar recipes (incl. bibtex+prov, prov, verify, pdf quote) + how to phrase FOUND-VIA for non-scholar sources | bibtex+prov, prov found-via, pdf quote, verify, WebFetch, Crossref |
references/scholar-enhancements.md | Record of shipped provenance support (#49–#53) and a place for future ideas | shipped, gh issue, future ideas |
Workflow checklist
