| name | cite |
| description | Produce a BibTeX/biblatex entry from an arXiv ID or DOI. Optionally appends to Paper/references.bib if it exists. Use when the user says "cite this", "bibtex for arXiv:...", "DOI 10.xxx/...", "add citation", or when adding a reference during paper writing.
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Cite
Thin wrapper around scripts/cite_from_id.wls that takes an identifier (arXiv ID, DOI, or URL containing either) and emits a BibTeX entry.
Optionally appends to Paper/references.bib and creates a wiki article via add-resource.
Recognized inputs
| Input | Example |
|---|
| New-style arXiv ID | 2301.00001 |
| Old-style arXiv ID | math-ph/0501001 |
| arXiv URL | https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.00001 |
arXiv: prefixed | arXiv:2301.00001 |
| Bare DOI | 10.1088/0951-7715/4/2/002 |
| DOI URL | https://doi.org/10.1088/... |
doi: prefixed | doi:10.1088/... |
Kernel execution (license-aware)
cite_from_id.wls spawns a fresh wolframscript kernel (a single Import of the arXiv/Crossref metadata), which consumes a license seat.
Before running it, check headroom on the AgentTools MCP (no extra seat):
With[{free = $MaxLicenseProcesses - $LicenseProcesses}, free]
If free <= 0, do not spawn wolframscript — run the same Import[...] through mcp__Wolfram__WolframLanguageEvaluator instead.
The script remains the path when the MCP is unavailable.
Workflow
Step 1 — Run the script
wolframscript -f "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/cite_from_id.wls" <identifier>
Output is a BibTeX entry on stdout.
For arXiv inputs the entry is built from the arXiv Atom API and includes title, author, year, eprint, archivePrefix, url, and abstract.
For DOI inputs the entry is fetched from Crossref's application/x-bibtex content negotiation.
Step 2 — Show the entry to the user
Always show the raw BibTeX before writing anywhere.
The user may want to edit the key, trim the abstract, or fix author casing.
Step 3 — Decide where it goes
Ask the user (or infer from context):
Paper/references.bib — if a Paper/ directory exists and the citation is for the paper being written.
Append at end, after checking the key is not already present (grep first).Journal/references.bib — if a Journal/ directory exists and the citation supports a journal entry (see the journal skill).
Append at end, after grep-checking the key is not already present, as for Paper.Wiki/Resources/<Key>.md — if the citation deserves a full wiki article (will be summarised).
Invoke add-resource with the BibTeX and the URL.- Stdout only — when the user is just looking up a citation in conversation.
Batch mode
If the user supplies multiple identifiers (newline- or comma-separated), run the script once per identifier, collect all BibTeX entries, deduplicate keys (suffix a, b, ... if collisions occur), then write the batch.
Failure handling
- arXiv fetch fails → script prints
% arXiv fetch failed for <id>.
Do not write a broken entry.
Tell the user the ID couldn't be resolved.
- Crossref fetch fails → script prints
% Crossref fetch failed for <doi>.
Same: do not write.
- Identifier looks like neither arXiv nor DOI → script exits non-zero with
% Could not classify identifier.
Ask the user for a corrected ID.
Integration with other skills
- add-resource — for full wiki articles instead of just BibTeX.
- search-math — surfaces references from MathWorld / Wikipedia that often have DOIs; pipe those DOIs into this skill.
- scaffold-paper — produces the
Paper/references.bib this skill appends to.
- journal — owns
Journal/references.bib; cite into it the same way as Paper.
