Reference checker — verifies that all references in the paper exist, with correct author names, titles, and years
Parse every reference cited in the research paper and verify that each one actually exists with the correct author name(s), title, year, and venue. Flag mismatches, hallucinated references, and unverifiable citations. Produce a verification report that feeds into the review stage.
This skill runs after ar-research-writer and before ar-paper-reviewer.
$ARGUMENTS[0]: workspace path (e.g., workspaces/ar-2026-03-22-a1b2c3d4)Read from the workspace:
{workspace}/drafts/research_paper.md — the paper draft containing references{workspace}/drafts/evidence_notes.json — evidence notes (if exists, from legacy mode){workspace}/sources/academic/*.json, sources/policy/*.json, — source records (if available)sources/media/*.jsonParse the paper to extract every reference from the References / Bibliography section. For each reference, extract:
Also scan the body text for in-text citations (e.g., "Smith, 2023", "Smith & Jones, 2022") and ensure each has a corresponding entry in the reference list.
For each extracted reference, run a WebSearch to verify:
Search query: "{first_author_surname}" "{title}" {year}
Check:
Assign a verification status to each reference:
verified: the reference exists with matching author, title, and yearcorrected: the reference exists but had minor errors (e.g., misspelled name, wrong year) — include the correctionmismatch: the reference partially matches a real work but has significant errors (wrong author for the title, or wrong title for the author)unverified: could not find evidence that this reference exists — may be hallucinatedorphan: cited in-text but missing from the reference listFor mismatch and corrected references, provide:
Write {workspace}/reviews/ref_check_report.json:
{
"total_references": 0,
"verified": 0,
"corrected": 0,
"mismatch": 0,
"unverified": 0,
"orphan_citations": 0,
"references": [
{
"original_author": "string",
"original_title": "string",
"original_year": 2024,
"status": "verified|corrected|mismatch|unverified",
"correct_author": "string or null",
"correct_title": "string or null",
"correct_year": "number or null",
"correct_venue": "string or null",
"verified_url": "string or null",
"issue": "string or null"
}
],
"orphan_citations": [
{
"in_text_citation": "string",
"location": "string"
}
]
}
Write {workspace}/reviews/ref_check_summary.md:
A human-readable summary that lists:
mismatch or unverified reference is a blocker for the review stage — it must be corrected or removedverified if the WebSearch confirms the reference exists