Verify sources

Skill tobiasosDev/citecheck/skills/verify-sources

Use to verify that citations/references are real, current, and not retracted — via citecheck (Crossref/OpenAlex/DOAJ). Trigger BOTH (a) when the user explicitly asks to check references ("are these real?", "check the refs in X", "is this retracted?"), AND (b) proactively, right after you have produced or edited content that contains citations or a bibliography, before you call that work done.From its SKILL.md

Install

npx -y skills add tobiasosDev/citecheck --skill verify-sources

Assembled from the repository path, not quoted from the project. Check it against their README if it does not work.

One thing to look at

3 stars3 stars. Stars are a popularity signal and not a quality one, but at this level it is likely that nobody has read this closely except its author, and you would be relying on your own review.

SKILL.md

2.6 KB, as published. Nobody here has run it

Verify sources with citecheck

You have a citecheck MCP server with three tools. Use them to catch fabricated, mismatched, or retracted references — especially ones you wrote.

When to reach for it

Reactive: the user asks whether sources are real / retracted, or to check a .bib/document.
Proactive (best-effort): immediately after you draft or edit a literature review, related-work section, reference list, or any text with inline citations, run a verification pass before presenting it as finished. This guidance is advisory — there is no hard gate — so make it a habit.

Which tool

verify_reference — ONE reference. Pass a free-text reference string, a DOI, or a title. Use this for inline cites you just wrote.
check_bibliography — a .bib / .ris / CSL-JSON export. Pass path (file on disk) or content (the text). Capped at 200 references.
check_document — a .docx / .txt / .md document on disk (pass path). citecheck finds the bibliography section itself.

How to read the verdicts — DO NOT over-claim

citecheck is deliberately conservative. Report results in the same spirit:

not_found / suspicious → citecheck could not MATCH the reference. This is not proof it is fabricated: preprints, books, grey literature, theses and non-English sources are under-represented in Crossref/OpenAlex. Surface it as "I could not verify this — please double-check," not "this is fake."
check_failed → a transient network/rate-limit miss. Not a problem with the reference. Do not report it as an issue; offer to retry.
partial_match → a record exists but the metadata only partly matches — usually just a sloppy entry (wrong year, dropped subtitle).
retracted → the one hard alarm. Flag it clearly even when the work is otherwise "verified."
Known limitation: the single-reference matcher has known false positives (explicit DOIs in the string, corporate/organizational authors). Treat a lone "not found" as a prompt to look, never a final verdict.

Privacy

Only the reference string leaves the machine (sent to Crossref/OpenAlex/DOAJ). The document or bibliography body is never uploaded or stored. Say so if the user asks.