References Agent Skill

Verify and manage citations in a grant proposal — every background claim referenced, every reference real and accurate, bibliography…

Context cost
2.6k tokensestimated from the bundle, loaded when it triggers
Bundle
1 file · 10.4 kBtext throughout, nothing executable
Licence
not declarednone named by its author
Last change
—no release on file
Servers it uses
Noneruns standalone

What it does

Verify and manage citations in a grant proposal — every background claim referenced, every reference real and accurate, bibliography formatted per agency rules. Use when the user mentions references, citations, bibliography, EndNote/Zotero/BibTeX for a grant, asks whether citations are real or worries about fabricated/hallucinated references, or before submission to confirm all sections relying on prior work are correctly cited.

What this skill changes about the agent has not been set out here as a list. Its SKILL.md, shown below, says it in the author’s own words.

productivity

The skill itself

A skill is instructions the model reads, so you can see what you are getting: below is the start of its SKILL.md. The front matter loads with every session, the body loads when the skill triggers, and the whole file comes with the install.

SKILL.md10.4 kB · preview
--- name: grant-references ---
6# References
7
8Two failure classes matter: substantive claims without citations (reads as unsupported assertion or, worse, unacknowledged borrowing) and citations that do not support the claim they anchor (a reviewer who checks one bad citation distrusts the rest). This skill audits both, then handles formatting.
9
10Read _agent/project-config.md for the reference manager and format in use. Work from the latest versions of all narrative documents. There is no separate references folder: the bibliography lives inside the manuscripts, managed by the team's tool (Zotero/EndNote/Mendeley fields in Word; a .bib file alongside the LaTeX source). Audit the documents and the manager's output where they live; report findings to 08_final_assembly/.
11
12## Pass 0 — Get machine-readable citations first
13
14How citations are stored determines how reliably they can be audited; get this right before any pass.
15
16**LaTeX**: \cite{...} keys and the .bib file are plain text — read them directly.
17
18**Word with a reference manager**: citations are *field codes*, not text. Plain-text extraction (pandoc, python-docx) returns only the field's cached display string — sometimes dropping or fragmenting it — and that cached string can be stale relative to the library. Do not audit from extracted plain text. Instead, a .docx is a zip: read word/document.xml and pull the fields directly — ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION (Zotero) and ADDIN CSL_CITATION (Mendeley) embed full CSL JSON per citation; ADDIN EN.CITE (EndNote) embeds XML records. These carry title, authors, year, and usually DOI for every cited item — authoritative for what was actually inserted, and a better input to Pass 2 verification than parsing formatted strings. Also ask the user for a library export (.bib, RIS, or EndNote XML) and reconcile fields against it.
19
20**Hand-typed citations** (no fields) are the fallback case: regex the display text. A document that mixes fielded and hand-typed citations is itself a finding — hand-typed entries won't renumber or restyle when the manager updates, which is how "[23]" ends up pointing at the wrong paper after a late insertion.
21
22Before auditing, have the user refresh fields and regenerate the bibliography in the manager — a stale generated bibliography is the most common source of false orphan findings.
23
24**Who writes what (Word with a reference manager).** The manager owns the citations; the model does not compete with it for the file. The model never writes ADDIN field codes and never types formatted citation text into the document — a hand-typed entry will not renumber or restyle, and a hand-built field will not round-trip through the manager. Two outputs are allowed: (1) inserting the PI's recorded **placeholder convention** (e.g., (PMID: 12345678)) into the text at the anchored sentence, under the write rules in project-config.md (re-read from disk first, fingerprint match, no ~$ lock file, rolling pre-write backup, log the write), which the user later converts in Zotero/EndNote; and (2) a **citation worklist** — anchor sentence quoted verbatim, resolved reference with PMID/DOI, the action (insert / replace / remove / fix metadata) — that the user executes in Word. Use the worklist whenever the file is open or the fingerprint has changed. Never refer to a citation by its number across an edit boundary: numbered citations renumber on every insertion, so "add the PMID to reference 23" is wrong the moment the user inserts one upstream. Anchor to the sentence and, for fielded citations, to the CSL item ID inside the field. After the user has executed a worklist, re-read the fields from document.xml to verify before reporting anything as done.
This is a preview of SKILL.md. Download or install the skill to get the whole thing.
In the file
SKILL.md1,540 words
Files1
Licencenot declared
Why you can read it

Nothing in a skill executes. The client loads the text and the model follows it, so a skill can be audited the way a runbook is — by reading it.

What it costs in context

Skills are not billed by the call. They are paid for in context: every token the instructions occupy is a token your code, your diff and your conversation cannot use. Here is what this one takes and when it takes it.

≈120
always loaded
The name and description, so the model knows the skill exists and when to reach for it.
2,480
on trigger
The instruction body, read only when the skill fires.
1.3%
of a 200k window
Ten skills this size would take about 13% of the window before you open a file.
050k100k150k200k context window

2.6k tokens, estimated from the bundle at four bytes to the token, held for the rest of the session once it triggers. Middling. Fine to keep on in a project where you use it weekly, worth unloading in one where you never do.

Servers bill, skills cost

A server charges by the month. A skill charges once per session, in context, and then keeps charging it for as long as the session lives.

Before and after

The same question, put to the same model twice: once as it comes, and once with these instructions loaded.

No worked example has been published for this skill yet.

The procedure it runs

The procedure has not been set out here step by step. It is in the body of its SKILL.md: the start of it is shown above, and the whole file comes with the install.

Prose, not code

These steps are written for a model to follow, not executed by a runtime. It can still be told to skip one, and it will say so when it does.

Servers it uses

None. This skill calls no MCP servers at all.

Everything it needs is in the instructions, so it works in a project with nothing connected — the model reads the file and changes how it works with what it can already reach.

Its SKILL.md does not declare which tools it asks the agent for, so what it touches is whatever the instructions themselves ask for — read them before you install it.

What it asks for
Writes filesnot declared
Network accessnot declared

This SKILL.md carries no allowed-tools line, so neither is declared. A skill grants no permissions of its own — it can only ask for tools your client already has.

What it will not do

Every skill is narrow, and the useful ones say where they stop. These are the jobs this one is the wrong tool for.

What this skill is not for has not been published here. Nothing is implied by that: it is a section the author has not filled in.

What is in the bundle

1 file, 10.4 kB on disk. A bundle is text throughout: the instructions the model reads, plus the templates it fills in.

  • SKILL.md10.4 kB
What is not in it

No dependencies and nothing executable: a skill is text the agent reads, so the bundle is 1 file you can review in full before installing.

Install

Installing copies the bundle into your project. Nothing runs at install time — the files sit on disk until the model reads them.

# References · 2.6k tokens when loaded · macOS, Linux mkdir -p .claude/skills && t=$(mktemp -d) && curl -fsSL -o "$t/bundle.tar.gz" https://mcprush.com/api/skills/references/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/references" ] && { [ ! -e .claude/skills/references ] || { mv .claude/skills/references "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/references" .claude/skills/ && echo "Installed .claude/skills/references"
On Windows, or any OS with Node 20+
npx mcprush@latest skill add joshua-d-campbell/references

Windows PowerShell says 'running scripts is disabled on this system'? Run Set-ExecutionPolicy -Scope CurrentUser RemoteSigned once, or type npx.cmd instead of npx (codex.cmd, gemini.cmd, grok.cmd likewise). PowerShell 7 needs neither. Writes to .claude/skills/references/ in the current project. For every project instead, run mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && t=$(mktemp -d) && curl -fsSL -o "$t/bundle.tar.gz" https://mcprush.com/api/skills/references/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/references" ] && { [ ! -e ~/.claude/skills/references ] || { mv ~/.claude/skills/references "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/references" ~/.claude/skills/ && echo "Installed ~/.claude/skills/references" (macOS, Linux) — or add --global to the npx line. The curl line replaces .claude/skills/references/ only after the download succeeds, so files left there by another skill of the same name, or by an older release, do not mix in. A copy already there is moved aside, not deleted, and the line prints where. It appears as grant-references in Gemini CLI, Codex, Copilot and Grok (its own name); Claude Code lists it by the folder name, references.

Which clients pick it up on their own

A skill is a folder of text. Most of these read a skills folder and pick it up without being told; the rest take the same folder another way — an upload in the app, a parameter on an API call — and then choose it by its description just the same.

Claude Code.claude/skills/
Claude DesktopCustomize › Skills
ChatGPTSkills › Create › Upload
Cursor.cursor/skills/
VS Code.github/skills/
Codex CLI.agents/skills/
Gemini CLI.gemini/skills/
Grok Build.grok/skills/
Microsoft CopilotSkills › Upload a skill
PerplexityComputer › Skills › Upload a skill
DeepSeek Harness.dsh/skills/
Zed.agents/skills/
Devin Desktop.devin/skills/
Windsurf (legacy).windsurf/skills/
OpenAI Agents SDKInstructions or sandbox Skills
HTTP / APIa request parameter
This release
Versionnot versioned
Publishedno release date on file
PriceFree
Referencejoshua-d-campbell/references

Versions

Its author publishes no version number, so there is nothing here to pin to: what you install is the folder as it stands today. Instructions change more often than APIs do — a skill can be rewritten entirely without anything it depends on moving.

Pinning

Nothing to pin to: this skill carries no version number of its own. What you install is what the folder holds on the day you install it.

Reviews

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