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Cite

Documents
cite

Cite is an Agent Skill for documents published in the brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills repository on GitHub: a SKILL.md instruction file an AI agent can load to do this task.

Finds a paper by title, author, or DOI, adds BibTeX to references.bib, and shows citation syntax. Use when adding a reference.

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How to use this skill

Bring this guide into your coding agent with a prompt tailored to the tool you use.

  1. Open your project in Codex.
  2. Copy and paste the prompt below.
  3. Review files and risks before approving any action.
Prompt to paste
Inspect the Agent Skill at https://github.com/brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills/blob/HEAD/skills/29-quarcs-lab-project20XXy/dot-claude/skills/cite/SKILL.md and all supporting files. Report provenance, permissions, scripts, dependencies, and security risks. Propose an exact installation into .agents/skills/cite, but wait for my approval before writing files or running scripts.

Copying this prompt does not install or run the skill. Review third-party files before use.

Add Citation

Find a paper, create a BibTeX entry, add it to references.bib, and provide the citation syntax.

Arguments

  • $ARGUMENTS — a paper description, title, author name, or DOI (e.g., "Acemoglu 2001 colonial origins" or "10.1257/aer.91.5.1369")

Steps

  1. Parse the argument to determine if it is a DOI or a descriptive search query.

  2. Search for the paper:

    • If a DOI is provided, fetch the metadata directly (use web search or CrossRef)
    • If a description is provided, search the web to identify the paper and its DOI/metadata

  3. Construct a valid BibTeX entry with these fields (at minimum):

    • @article{key, (or @book, @incollection, etc. as appropriate)
    • author, title, journal (or booktitle), year, volume, number, pages, doi
    • Use a citation key in the format: lastname_yearword (e.g., acemoglu2001colonial)

  4. Read references.bib and check for duplicate keys:

    • If the exact key already exists, inform the user and show the existing entry
    • If a similar key exists (same author and year), warn the user

  5. Append the new entry to references.bib (add a blank line before the new entry)

  6. Show the user the citation syntax for use in index.qmd:

    • Narrative: @key → "Author (Year)"
    • Parenthetical: [@key] → "(Author, Year)"
    • Multiple: [@key1; @key2]

  7. Ask if the user wants to create an annotation note in references/ (see /project:literature-note)

Error handling

  • If the paper cannot be found, report the search results and ask the user to provide more details or a DOI.
  • If references.bib does not exist, create it with the new entry.