Citation Format

citation-format

Users (and judges, on live demo queries) will type citations any number of ways. The Harvester's /lookup is exact-string match — it'll miss otherwise valid citations because of formatting drift. This skill normalizes them.

When to use this skill

• Right before calling harvester-query.lookup_citation(...) if the user-provided citation isn't already in canonical form.
• When you're not sure if a citation is canonical, just run it through normalize() — it's idempotent.

Canonical form (CA Vehicle Code example)

Cal. Veh. Code § 23152(a)

• Cal. Veh. Code — the universal citation prefix (state-specific)
• § — section sign with thin spaces
• 23152(a) — section number with subsection

Use

from openclaw.skills.citation_format.normalize import normalize

normalize("CVC 23152a")                          # → "Cal. Veh. Code § 23152(a)"
normalize("California Vehicle Code Section 23152(a)")
normalize("cal veh § 23152(a)")

From shell:

cd ~/Specter && python3 openclaw/skills/citation_format/normalize.py "CVC 23152a"

Rules of thumb

1. If you have already-canonical form (Cal. Veh. Code § 23152(a)), pass through unchanged.
2. If user gives just a section number (23152(a)) and context is clearly California, prepend Cal. Veh. Code § .
3. Don't guess across jurisdictions. If the user just says "23152(a)" with no state, ask which state. Don't default to CA silently.

Out of scope

• Case citations (e.g. Smith v. Jones) — this is statute-only.
• Federal citations (CFR, USC) — vehicle codes are state-level.
• Resolving statutes that have been renumbered. Out of scope for hackathon.