citation-formatter

citation-formatter is a skill for Claude Code from muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills. It costs 0 tokens per session (2,308 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide for creating and correcting source citations and reference lists in academic styles such as APA, MLA, Chicago, IEEE, and Vancouver. Citations show readers where research claims and sources came from.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to format references, convert between citation styles, check citations, or create a bibliography or works cited page.
Why use it?
It removes the need to remember the formatting rules for each academic field and helps identify citation mistakes.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the academic-writer plugin — 27 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it to format references, convert between citation styles, check citations, or create a bibliography or works cited page.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills/citation-formatter
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills --skill citation-formatter
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install academic-writer, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 27 skills.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for citation-formatter

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills/citation-formatter/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills/citation-formatter)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills/citation-formatter"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills/citation-formatter/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for citation-formatter

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills/citation-formatter"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills/citation-formatter.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 0 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,308 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00000 $0.02308
Opus 5 $0.00000 $0.01154
Sonnet 5 $0.00000 $0.00462
Haiku 4.5 $0.00000 $0.00231

Measured 12d ago against content hash e4a4e88cb514, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

citation-formatter scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 12d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/citation-formatter/SKILL.md · 214 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 214 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Citation Formatter

Citation styles are the disciplinary "branding" of scholarly communication — they encode a field's epistemological values and allow readers to trace intellectual lineage, verify facts, and assess the recency of evidence.


Style Selection Guide

Style Primary Disciplines In-Text Format End List
APA 7th Social Sciences, Psychology, Nursing, Education (Author, Year, p. #) References (alphabetical)
MLA 9th Humanities, Literature, Languages (Author Page #) Works Cited (alphabetical)
Chicago NB History, Fine Arts, Literature Superscript numeral¹ Bibliography (alphabetical)
Chicago AD Physical, natural, social sciences (Author Year, p.) Reference List (alphabetical)
IEEE Engineering, Computer Science, Electronics [1] numbered References (sequential)
Vancouver Medicine, Biomedicine, Nursing ¹ or (1) numbered Reference List (sequential)
Harvard UK/Australian universities (various disciplines) (Author Year) Reference List (alphabetical)
ACS Chemistry Numbered or author-date References
CSE Biology, Life Sciences Citation-name or -sequence References

APA 7th Edition — Full Rules

In-Text Citations

  • 1–2 authors: (Smith, 2021) / (Smith & Jones, 2021)
  • 3+ authors: From the FIRST citation → (Taylor et al., 2018)
  • No author: Use shortened title in quotes: ("Title," 2020)
  • Corporate author: Spell out first time, abbreviate after: (World Health Organization [WHO], 2019), then (WHO, 2019)
  • Same author, same year: Add a, b, c: (Smith, 2021a), (Smith, 2021b)
  • Direct quote: Always add page number: (Smith, 2021, p. 45)
  • Secondary source: (Original Author, Year, as cited in Secondary Author, Year)
  • No date: Use (n.d.): (Smith, n.d.)
  • Classical/sacred works: (Bible, King James Version, Genesis 1:1) — no reference entry needed

Reference List Rules

  • Alphabetical by first author's surname
  • Up to 20 authors listed in full; for 21+, list first 19, insert ellipsis, then final author
  • No publisher location required (removed in 7th edition)
  • DOIs and URLs formatted as active hyperlinks
  • Sentence case for article and book titles; Title Case for journal names

Read the full file on GitHub · 214 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 12d ago First seen · 214 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A e4a4e88cb514

Subscribe to this mod's changes

citation-formatter is a skill published in the GitHub repository muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills (6 stars, last pushed 5mo ago), licensed MIT. It costs nothing until one of its globs matches a file; then it loads 2,308 tokens. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

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