# Recommend Citations From Text

> Recommend supporting references for a paragraph, section, draft, outline, or claim list, identify the best citation insertion points, and record the selected papers with title, link, and placement notes for later BibTeX entry. Use when Codex needs to read prose and answer requests such as "find citations for this text", "tell me where to insert references", "recommend papers for this paragraph", or "make a citation intake sheet before updating a .bib file".

- Skill: `daughter-of-void/recommend-citations-from-text` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 4 files)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add daughter-of-void/recommend-citations-from-text`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/daughter-of-void/recommend-citations-from-text/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Research & Search
- Author: Daughter-of-Void (https://skillmd.com/u/daughter-of-void)
- Updated: 2026-09-22
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/daughter-of-void/recommend-citations-from-text

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# Recommend Citations From Text

Read the target text, decide which claims need support, recommend appropriate references, and produce a citation intake document that can be reused when adding entries to a BibTeX file later.

Do not invent papers, titles, or links. Verify each recommended source before presenting it. When browsing is available, prefer primary sources such as publisher pages, arXiv, conference pages, journal landing pages, or official project pages.

## Workflow

### 1. Read and segment the text

- Work paragraph by paragraph or sentence by sentence.
- Mark the exact span that needs support. Use one of these anchors:
  - A short quoted phrase from the text
  - A sentence opening
  - A sentence index within the paragraph
- Separate different evidence needs:
  - definition or background claim
  - factual statement or statistic
  - method choice
  - comparison with prior work
  - broad field overview

### 2. Choose citation strategy

- Prefer the smallest useful set of citations.
- Match source type to the claim:
  - Use a seminal or standard reference for canonical definitions and classic methods.
  - Use a recent survey for broad summaries when the text synthesizes a subfield.
  - Use recent primary papers for current empirical claims, benchmarks, and trends.
  - Use the original source for datasets, tools, models, and named methods when possible.
- When one sentence makes multiple claims, either:
  - recommend one source that supports all of them, or
  - split the sentence into multiple citation anchors and say so explicitly.

### 3. Recommend references

- For each anchor, provide:
  - recommended paper title
  - stable link
  - brief reason it fits this claim
  - suggested insertion position
- If confidence is limited, say why, for example:
  - the paragraph is too broad
  - the claim needs a domain-specific paper
  - the text is making a statement that should be softened instead of cited

### 4. Mark insertion positions clearly

- Use placement notes that are easy to map back into the draft:
  - `after sentence 2 in paragraph 1`
  - `after "transformer-based sequence modeling"`
  - `end of the first paragraph`
  - `replace generic cite at paragraph 3 sentence 1`
- If the best edit is to split or rewrite a sentence before citing, say that directly.

### 5. Create or update the citation intake document

- Keep a running document for later BibTeX entry.
- Record exactly these fields for each candidate reference:
  - `ID`
  - `Source text anchor`
  - `Suggested insertion location`
  - `Paper title`
  - `Link`
  - `Why this source`
  - `Status`
- Default status values:
  - `to-add`
  - `already-in-bib`
  - `needs-review`
  - `rejected`
- When no log exists yet, initialize one with:

```bash
python scripts/create_citation_log.py --output /absolute/path/to/citation-intake.md --title "Citation Intake"
```

- Then append rows manually or programmatically in the same structure.

## Output Format

Return two things:

1. A concise recommendation list in chat or in the working artifact.
Use this shape when no stricter format is requested:

```markdown
1. Anchor: "..."
   Suggested insertion: ...
   Paper: ...
   Link: ...
   Rationale: ...
```

2. A citation intake document path.
Use the template in `assets/citation-log-template.md` or create one with `scripts/create_citation_log.py`.

## Resource Notes

### `scripts/create_citation_log.py`

- Create a reusable Markdown intake sheet for citation collection.
- Use `--append` to keep an existing log and add a fresh empty section header for another pass.

### `assets/citation-log-template.md`

- Copy or adapt this template when a lightweight manual log is enough.

## Handoff to BibTeX Work

- After the intake sheet is ready, use the recorded title and link to add the final entry into a `.bib` file.
- If the task is specifically about appending normalized entries into a bibliography, hand off to `bibtex-reference-adder` after this skill finishes the recommendation and intake stages.