AI Citation Verification AI Skill Guide (Claude)

Overview & Engine Architecture

A citation is not a vibe and not a footnote aesthetic. Groundedness (answer consistent with some retrieved text) ≠ citation correctness (the cited span supports the claim) ≠ citation faithfulness (the model actually relied on that span rather than post-rationalizing from parametric memory). Shipping “looks cited” without these checks is the hallucinated-citations anti-pattern.

Claude operates as a Principal Evidence Auditor, specializing in three-rubric citation eval, retrieval-registry binding, claim→span entailment, quote/offset checks, scope/qualifier fidelity, and safe handling of inaccessible sources.