Verify Citations

Verify Citations Command

Validate that all citations, references, and factual claims are backed by actual sources in the research corpus.

Instructions

When invoked, perform systematic citation verification:

1. Parse Target File

   • Load the specified file (or all markdown files if no path given)
   • Extract all citation patterns:
     • @.aiwg/research/sources/* references
     • @.aiwg/research/findings/* references
     • REF-XXX inline references
     • DOI patterns (10.XXXX/...)
     • Author-year patterns (Author et al., YYYY)
     • RLM citation patterns (#1225): [<artifact_id>@<content_hash>, L<n>-<n>] and path-only fallback [<artifact_id>, L<n>-<n>]

2. Verify Each Citation

   • Check file existence for @-mention references
   • Validate REF-XXX against frontmatter in corpus
   • Verify DOI format validity
   • Check page number ranges
   • Validate quoted text against source
   • For RLM citations: verify cited file exists; if content_hash present, recompute current hash and compare (see RLM Citation Verification below)

3. Detect Hallucinations

   • Flag citations to non-existent files
   • Flag fabricated DOIs
   • Flag statistics without sources
   • Flag author names not in corpus

4. Check GRADE Compliance

   • Load quality assessment for each cited source
   • Compare hedging language to evidence quality
   • Flag overclaiming (HIGH-confidence language for LOW evidence)

5. Generate Report

   • Display summary table (total, valid, issues)
   • List each issue with severity and fix suggestion
   • Include RLM Citations section when present (Fresh / Stale / Un-versioned counts)
   • Provide overall PASS/FAIL verdict

6. Auto-Fix Mode (--fix)

   • Downgrade hedging language for GRADE violations
   • Remove citations to non-existent sources (with comment)
   • Add TODO markers for sources needing verification
   • For STALE RLM citations: leave them in place but annotate with [STALE: hash mismatch]; do not auto-rewrite (the agent that emitted them must decide whether the new content still supports the claim)

RLM Citation Verification

When the target file contains RLM-format citations (#1205, #1223), verify-citations validates them against the current state of the cited artifacts.

Citation patterns

The skill recognizes two inline forms (matching the schema at agentic/code/addons/rlm/schemas/citation-tuple.json):

• Versioned: [<artifact_id>@<content_hash>, <lines>] — full provenance with content hash
  • Example: [src/auth/login.ts@a8f9c2d4e5f60718, L42-58]
• Path-only fallback: [<artifact_id>, <lines>] — citation without content hash (artifact wasn't in the index when emitted)
  • Example: [src/legacy/auth.py, L88]

The lines field is optional in both forms.

Verdict logic

For versioned RLM citations:

1. Resolve <artifact_id> to a project-relative file path
2. If file does not exist → verdict: MISSING (error)
3. If file exists, compute its current content hash using the same routine as the artifact index: sha256, truncated to first 16 hex chars (matches src/artifacts/index-builder.ts:243)
4. Compare to the citation's content_hash:
   • Match → verdict: FRESH (pass)
   • Mismatch → verdict: STALE (warning by default; error in --strict)

For path-only fallback RLM citations:

1. Resolve <artifact_id> to a project-relative file path
2. If file does not exist → verdict: MISSING (error)
3. If file exists → verdict: UN-VERSIONED (warning by default; error in --strict)

Stale verdict means the file content has changed since the citation was emitted — the claim may no longer be supported by the cited region. The simple hash-mismatch heuristic doesn't distinguish whitespace edits from semantic changes; richer semantic-drift detection is the responsibility of aiwg index doctor --rlm-audit (#1208).

Hash computation

The hash routine MUST match the index implementation exactly so citations emitted by rlm-batch round-trip cleanly:

sha256(file_contents).hexdigest()[0:16]

See src/artifacts/index-builder.ts:243 for the canonical implementation. Any verification logic that diverges from this convention will produce false stale verdicts.

Report format

When RLM citations are present, the report adds a new section:

RLM Citations: 12 total
  ✓ Fresh: 9
  ⚠ Stale: 2
  ⚠ Un-versioned: 1
  ✗ Missing: 0

STALE citations:
  - [src/auth/login.ts@a8f9c2d4e5f60718, L42-58]
    Current hash: f3b2c1d4e5a60718
    File modified since citation emitted

UN-VERSIONED citations:
  - [src/legacy/auth.py, L88]
    File exists but no content hash; consider running through aiwg index

Mode flags

• Default mode: auto-detects both research-corpus citations (existing behavior) and RLM citations (new). No flag required.
• --rlm: opt-in to RLM-only mode — skip @-mention research-corpus checks. Useful when verifying RLM-aggregated outputs in CI without research-corpus context.
• --strict: existing flag — STALE and UN-VERSIONED RLM citations escalate from warnings to errors and produce non-zero exit.

Arguments

• [file-path] - File to verify (default: all .md files in current directory)
• --strict - Treat warnings as errors (including STALE and UN-VERSIONED RLM citations)
• --fix - Automatically fix GRADE violations and remove hallucinated citations (does not rewrite RLM citations — see #6 above)
• --report - Save report to .aiwg/reports/citation-verification.md
• --corpus-only - Only check @-mention references, skip author-year patterns
• --rlm (#1225) - Verify RLM citations only; skip research-corpus checks

References

• @$AIWG_ROOT/agentic/code/frameworks/sdlc-complete/rules/citation-policy.md - Citation enforcement rules
• @$AIWG_ROOT/agentic/code/frameworks/sdlc-complete/agents/citation-verifier.md - Citation Verifier agent
• @$AIWG_ROOT/agentic/code/frameworks/sdlc-complete/schemas/research/citation-audit.yaml - Audit schema
• @$AIWG_ROOT/agentic/code/frameworks/sdlc-complete/schemas/research/hallucination-detection.yaml - Detection patterns
• @$AIWG_ROOT/agentic/code/addons/rlm/schemas/citation-tuple.json - RLM citation tuple schema (#1223)
• @$AIWG_ROOT/agentic/code/addons/rlm/skills/rlm-batch/SKILL.md - RLM citation emission contract