CiteAnything — Verifiable Evidence Citations

CiteAnything creates verifiable, replayable citations for every data claim. Each citation stores the source URL, a text anchor for highlight positioning, and triggers an automatic screenshot as visual proof.

When to Use This Skill

Use this skill after you have obtained data (from a web API, web page, or KB document) and need to:

• Create a verifiable citation linking a claim to its source
• Generate a [@ev:TOKEN] marker to embed in your response
• Enable the user to click through and see the original source with the relevant text highlighted

Every data claim in your response must have a citation. Never skip the citation step.

API Endpoint

POST https://citeanything.veri-glow.com/api/citation

Authentication: Authorization: Bearer $USER_JWT

Request Fields

Field	Type	Required	Default	Description
claim	string	Yes	—	The claim being cited (e.g. "Tesla's total revenues were $94.8B")
source_url	string	Yes	—	URL of the data source
quoted_text	string	No	""	Verbatim excerpt (1-3 sentences) from the source. Must be copied exactly — never paraphrase.
citation_type	string	No	"text"	"text" for text citations, "table" for table citations
action_steps	string	No	""	JSON string of browser action steps (for dynamic pages)
anchor	string	No	""	Short verbatim excerpt (5-10 words) for highlight positioning. Must be exact copy from source.
row_anchor	string	No	""	Table citation: row identifier
col_anchor	string	No	""	Table citation: column identifier
selection_scope	string	No	"cell"	Table citation: "cell" or "row"
source_type	string	No	"web"	"web" for web sources, "kb" for knowledge base documents
kb_file	string	No	""	KB document file stem (e.g. "bd922df1043e")
page	string	No	""	KB document page number for highlight positioning

Response

{
  "token": "a1b2c3d4",
  "uid": "unique-id",
  "url": "https://citeanything.veri-glow.com/e/a1b2c3d4"
}

Usage: Embed in Response

Insert the token as a citation marker in your final answer:

Tesla's total revenues in 2025 were $94.8 billion [@ev:a1b2c3d4].

The user's frontend will render [@ev:TOKEN] as a clickable citation link.

Example: Web Citation

curl -X POST "https://citeanything.veri-glow.com/api/citation" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $USER_JWT" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "claim": "Shanghai SSE bond trading volume was 2,087.45 billion RMB",
    "source_url": "https://www.sse.com.cn/market/bonddata/overview/day/",
    "quoted_text": "成交金额(亿元) 2,087.45",
    "citation_type": "text",
    "anchor": "成交金额 2,087.45",
    "source_type": "web",
    "action_steps": "[{\"action\":\"navigate\",\"url\":\"https://www.sse.com.cn/market/bonddata/overview/day/\"}]"
  }'

Example: KB Document Citation

When citing knowledge base documents, use source_type: "kb" with additional KB-specific fields:

curl -X POST "https://citeanything.veri-glow.com/api/citation" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $USER_JWT" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "claim": "Tesla total revenues in 2025 were $94.8 billion",
    "source_url": "https://citeanything.veri-glow.com/kb/user/1/abc123def456.html",
    "quoted_text": "Total revenues 94,827 97,690 96,773 Cost of revenues 76,303 79,087 79,113 Gross profit 18,524 18,603 17,660",
    "anchor": "Total revenues 94,827",
    "citation_type": "text",
    "source_type": "kb",
    "kb_file": "abc123def456",
    "page": "53"
  }'

KB citation rules:

• anchor: short verbatim excerpt (5-10 words) — exact copy from extracted text, used for highlight positioning
• quoted_text: longer verbatim passage (1-3 sentences) surrounding the anchor — exact copy, used for context highlighting. If no longer passage is available, set equal to anchor
• page: the actual page number where the text was extracted — never guess
• Both anchor and quoted_text must be copied verbatim from your extraction output. Never paraphrase, reorganize, or combine text from different parts of the document

Text vs Table Citations

Text citations (citation_type: "text")

Use anchor + quoted_text for positioning. The replay system highlights the matching text on the source page.

Table citations (citation_type: "table")

Use row_anchor + col_anchor for cell-level positioning:

• row_anchor: identifies the row (e.g. "国债", "Tesla Inc")
• col_anchor: identifies the column header (e.g. "成交金额", "Revenue")
• selection_scope: "cell" highlights one cell, "row" highlights the entire row

Workflow

1. Get data:
   • KB documents → curl + Python extraction
   • Web/live data → first try /agentmap for API specs:
     • If agentmap has a map → use the documented API
     • If agentmap has no map → report the missing URL (see below), then try curl the page directly or web search as fallback
2. Create citation — POST /api/citation for each claim (this skill)
3. Embed markers — insert [@ev:TOKEN] in your response text
4. Never skip citations — every data claim needs evidence backing

Reporting missing AgentMap URLs

When a website is not indexed by AgentMap (404 response), report it so the team can prioritize adding it:

curl -X POST "https://agentmap.veri-glow.com/api/request-map" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"path": "www.example.com/data-page", "user_query": "what the user asked"}'

This does not block your work — still attempt to get the data by other means after reporting.

Knowledge Base (KB) Document Upload

Users can upload local PDF files to the CiteAnything server for citation. The server converts PDFs to browsable HTML using pdf2htmlEX.

Step 1: Upload the PDF

curl -X POST "https://citeanything.veri-glow.com/api/kb/upload" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $USER_JWT" \
  -F "file=@/path/to/document.pdf" \
  -F "display_name=My Research Report"

Response:

{
  "doc_id": 42,
  "stem": "bd922df1043e",
  "status": "processing",
  "message": "Document uploaded. Converting to HTML..."
}

Save the stem — you'll need it for citations.

Step 2: Wait for conversion

PDF → HTML conversion runs in the background. Poll until status becomes "ready":

curl -s "https://citeanything.veri-glow.com/api/kb/documents" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $USER_JWT"

Check the document's status field:

• "processing" → still converting, wait a few seconds and retry
• "ready" → HTML is available at the url field
• "failed" → conversion failed

Step 3: Download and extract text

Once ready, the document is available at:

https://citeanything.veri-glow.com/kb/user/{user_id}/{stem}.html

Important: Do NOT use WebFetch — KB HTML files are too large and WebFetch will only return CSS. Always use curl + Python:

curl -s "https://citeanything.veri-glow.com/kb/user/{user_id}/{stem}.html" -o document.html

Then extract text with Python. Critical: pdf2htmlEX uses PUA (Private Use Area) Unicode characters (U+E000–U+F8FF) instead of spaces. You MUST replace them:

import re
from html.parser import HTMLParser

class TextExtractor(HTMLParser):
    def __init__(self):
        super().__init__()
        self.texts = []
        self.skip = False
    def handle_starttag(self, tag, attrs):
        if tag in ('script', 'style'):
            self.skip = True
    def handle_endtag(self, tag):
        if tag in ('script', 'style'):
            self.skip = False
    def handle_data(self, data):
        if not self.skip and data.strip():
            self.texts.append(data)

with open("document.html", encoding="utf-8") as f:
    html = f.read()

parser = TextExtractor()
parser.feed(html)
text = "\n".join(parser.texts)

# Replace PUA characters with spaces
text = re.sub(r'[\ue000-\uf8ff]', ' ', text)
print(text)

Step 4: Create KB citation

Use POST /api/citation with KB-specific fields (see "Example: KB Document Citation" above).

Listing and deleting documents

# List all documents
curl -s "https://citeanything.veri-glow.com/api/kb/documents" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $USER_JWT"

# Delete a document
curl -X DELETE "https://citeanything.veri-glow.com/api/kb/documents/{doc_id}" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $USER_JWT"

Notes

• Web citations automatically trigger a screenshot for visual proof
• KB citations skip screenshots (the document is already hosted)
• The [@ev:TOKEN] link takes the user to a replay page that re-opens the source and highlights the cited content
• Use $USER_JWT environment variable for authentication — it is set automatically by the CiteAnything workspace