Documenting With Sources

Documenting with Sources

Common conventions for writing Markdown documents that pull from outside sources. Apply to any deliverable that surfaces facts taken from elsewhere — survey reports, paper explainers, and similar.

Cite every factual claim

Every factual claim in the deliverable must carry a citation. A claim with no citation cannot be verified, and is worthless as a documented finding. If a claim cannot be tied to a source, mark it explicitly (e.g. "citation not confirmed"). Do not slip uncited claims in silently.

Reference format

• In-text references take the shape [label (YYYY/MM), location]. How to fill the label slot (publication name, author short-form, position-only for the paper under review, etc.) is decided by the calling skill.
• Do not use bare numeric references such as [1] or [2]. Numbers alone force the reader to bounce between text and source list; readability drops.
• For the formatting of quotation blocks themselves (code-block fencing, original-and-translation pairing, where to place the source reference, anti-patterns), follow the writing-quotation skill. Read writing-quotation before drafting.

Quotation vs prose

• Keep quotations and prose (the writer's own summary or interpretation) visually and structurally separate. Even when not quoting, write in a way that prevents the source's claim and the writer's interpretation from blending.
• When quoting a source written in a language other than the writer's working language, place the translation alongside the original inside the same code block (see writing-quotation).

No fabricated associations or interpretations

Do not write interpretations, speculation, or associations that the source itself does not contain.

• Do not invent connections such as "this relates to X", "this could be applied to Y", or "this suggests Z" when the source does not say so.
• Do not import context from the surrounding conversation or the calling project into the body of the document. Descriptions of a source must stay within the source's own content.
• Good: "Main criticism: even with flipped labels, accuracy does not always drop, and the text-gradient is mathematically distinct from classical gradient descent" (states what the source actually says).
• Bad: "Relation to AI writing improvement: feedback-based improvement is mathematically different from gradient descent..." (the source does not say this; the connection is fabricated from conversation context).

Source-list format

The source list at the end of the document uses this format:

[label, YYYY/MM] Author. "Title." Publication. URL

Do not use the - [n] list format.

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: mathbullet
• Source: mathbullet/skills
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.