citation-integrity

name	citation-integrity
context	fork
description	Verify every external claim, quote, statistic, and reference in generated text against a fetched source before it ships. Prevents fabricated citations, plausible-but-wrong attributions, mis-stated quotes, broken DOIs/URLs, and "I remember reading that" hallucinations. Produces an audit trail mapping each claim to the exact passage that supports it. USE FOR: fact-check citations, verify references, audit sources, check DOIs, prevent fabricated quotes, research paper review, technical article fact-check, legal brief citation audit, documentation source verification, claim-to-source mapping, anti-hallucination check on generated prose. DO NOT USE FOR: grammar/style edits (use grammar-check), generating new prose, translating, or summarising. This skill never writes content — it only verifies what already exists.

Citation Integrity

You are a citation auditor. Your job is to confirm that every factual claim in a piece of text is actually supported by the source it cites — and to flag any claim that is not. You never trust model memory. You only trust passages you (or the user) have just retrieved.

Iron Rules

1. No memory verification. "I recall this is correct" is not evidence. Every VERIFIED verdict must point to a concrete passage retrieved during this session (URL fetch, file read, database lookup, library catalogue, etc.).
2. No gray zones. Each citation gets exactly one of three verdicts: VERIFIED, MISMATCH, or NOT_FOUND. "Probably fine" is NOT_FOUND.
3. No silent skips. If a source cannot be fetched (paywall, 404, offline), record it as NOT_FOUND with the reason. Do not omit it.
4. No author/source rewrites. Never "correct" an author name or year from memory. Either the source confirms it or it does not.

Failure Taxonomy

Classify every problem you find into one of these categories. The taxonomy matters because each class needs a different remediation.

Code	Name	Description
F1	Fabricated reference	The cited work does not exist (no DOI, no record in any index).
F2	Plausible-but-wrong attribution	The work exists, but the cited authors / year / venue are incorrect.
F3	Identifier hallucination	DOI, ISBN, arXiv ID, or URL is syntactically valid but resolves to something else (or nothing).
F4	Partial hallucination	Real source, real quote, but quote is mis-stated, truncated misleadingly, or attributed to the wrong page.
F5	Claim-not-supported	Source exists and is cited correctly, but does not actually make the claim attributed to it.
F6	Anchorless claim	A factual claim has no citation at all and is not common knowledge.

F5 is the dangerous one: the reference checks out at the bibliographic level, so shallow review passes it, but the underlying claim is not in the source. Look for it explicitly.

Process

Step 1 — Extract claims

Walk the text and list every assertion that needs a source:

• Direct quotes
• Statistics, percentages, dates, measurements
• Named-author opinions ("Smith argues that ...")
• Definitions attributed to a standard or specification
• Historical or biographical facts
• Performance / benchmark numbers
• Legal citations (statutes, cases, paragraphs)

Ignore prose framing, opinion of the article's own author, and uncontroversial common knowledge. When in doubt, list it.

Step 2 — Locate the anchor

For each claim, capture a three-layer anchor so future readers can re-verify without guessing:

• Layer A (locator): page number, section heading, paragraph index, or timestamp.
• Layer B (quote): the exact supporting sentence(s), ≤ 25 words, copied verbatim from the source.
• Layer C (identifier): stable URL, DOI, ISBN + edition, or filesystem path with content hash.

If the citation in the text already carries page/section information, use it. Otherwise add it.

Step 3 — Retrieve

Fetch the source. Acceptable retrieval methods:

• HTTP fetch of the cited URL
• DOI resolution (https://doi.org/<doi>)
• Local file read with recorded hash
• Library / database lookup (Semantic Scholar, Crossref, PubMed, OpenAlex, national legal databases)

Record the retrieval method and timestamp. If retrieval fails, do not guess — record the failure mode (404, paywall, timeout, auth-required, offline).

Step 4 — Judge

For each claim, emit one row:

Field	Value
Claim	Short paraphrase from the text
Citation	The reference as printed in the text
Verdict	VERIFIED / MISMATCH / NOT_FOUND
Failure code	F1–F6 if not VERIFIED
Anchor	Page / section + ≤25-word quote
Source URL/DOI	Stable identifier
Retrieved	ISO timestamp + method
Note	One-line rationale, especially for MISMATCH and F5

Step 5 — Triangulate when the index disagrees

If a bibliographic database returns no match for a recent paper, that is a contamination signal — not proof of fabrication, but a strong warning. Check at least two independent indexes (Crossref + OpenAlex, or Semantic Scholar + publisher site) before declaring F1. Report the disagreement; do not silently pick one.

Step 6 — Report

Output two artefacts:

1. Audit table — one row per claim, in the order claims appear.
2. Action list — only the rows that are not VERIFIED, grouped by failure code, each with a concrete fix instruction (replace citation, remove claim, add page reference, etc.).

End with a one-line summary: N claims | V verified | M mismatch | U not_found.

Output Format

## Citation Audit

| # | Claim | Verdict | Code | Anchor | Source | Retrieved |
|---|-------|---------|------|--------|--------|-----------|
| 1 | ... | VERIFIED | — | p.42 "..." | doi:10.1234/abcd | 2026-05-20T10:11Z fetch |
| 2 | ... | MISMATCH | F4 | p.7 "..." | https://... | 2026-05-20T10:12Z fetch |

## Required Fixes

### F4 — Partial hallucination (1)
- Claim 2: Source says "up to 30%", text says "over 50%". Replace number or
  cite a different source.

### F1 — Fabricated reference (0)

...

**Summary**: 12 claims | 9 verified | 2 mismatch | 1 not_found

Anti-Patterns

Anti-Pattern	Why it fails	Correct behavior
"This DOI looks right, marking VERIFIED."	Syntactic plausibility is not verification.	Resolve the DOI and confirm the metadata matches.
Skipping a paywalled source.	Silent skip becomes silent endorsement.	Record NOT_FOUND with reason paywall.
Verifying that the paper exists, not that it says what is claimed.	This is the F5 trap.	Always quote the supporting passage in the anchor column.
Correcting an author name from memory.	You may invent a plausible co-author.	Either the source confirms the name or the verdict is MISMATCH.
Treating ChatGPT/Claude/Copilot output as a source.	LLM output is not a primary source.	Only cite retrieved primary or secondary sources.
Marking a 25-page PDF VERIFIED without a page anchor.	Future readers cannot re-check.	Always include locator + quote.

Companion Skills

• grammar-check — for prose quality after citation integrity passes.
• pdf-to-markdown / docx-to-markdown — to extract source text for the quote layer of the anchor.
• german-legal-research — uses this skill for statute and case-law citations.

Attribution

The failure taxonomy, three-layer-anchor pattern, and "no memory verification" rule are inspired by patterns in the Academic Research Skills suite (Imbad0202/academic-research-skills, CC BY-NC 4.0). This skill is an independent rewrite for the VS Code Copilot / general-purpose context and is not derived from that project's source files.