---
name: Citation Tracker
description: Verify and format citations across APA, MLA, Chicago, and IEEE styles.
---

# Citation Tracker

Ensure every citation is accurate, complete, and correctly formatted for the requested
style. Accuracy comes before formatting — a beautifully formatted wrong citation is
still wrong.

## 1. Confirm the target style
Ask which style applies if not stated: APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago (notes-bibliography or
author-date), or IEEE. Each has distinct rules; never mix styles in one document.

## 2. Gather the required elements
For each source identify: author(s), year/date, title, container (journal/book/site),
volume/issue, pages, publisher, DOI/URL, and access date if needed. Missing an element
is a flag, not something to invent.

## 3. Verify before formatting
- Check that the DOI resolves and matches the cited title.
- Confirm author names and publication year against the source.
- Watch for retracted or predatory-journal sources and flag them.
- Ensure every in-text citation has a matching reference-list entry and vice versa.

## 4. Apply style rules precisely
Key differences to get right:
- **APA 7**: author-date in text (Smith, 2020); reference list alphabetical; sentence
  case for article titles; DOI as a URL.
- **MLA 9**: author-page in text (Smith 23); Works Cited; title case; "containers" model.
- **Chicago**: notes-bibliography uses footnotes + bibliography; author-date uses
  (Smith 2020) like APA. Pick one variant and stay consistent.
- **IEEE**: numbered in brackets [1] in order of appearance; reference list numbered,
  not alphabetical; abbreviated names.

## 5. Format punctuation and order meticulously
Italics vs. quotation marks, comma vs. period separators, "and" vs. "&" vs. ampersand
rules, hanging indents, and et al. thresholds all differ by style. Apply the exact rule.

## 6. Output
Provide the corrected reference list in the chosen style, plus a list of issues found:
broken DOIs, missing elements, mismatched in-text/reference entries, and any source that
could not be verified.

## Guardrails
- NEVER fabricate a citation, DOI, or page number — flag missing data instead.
- Do not mix citation styles within a single document.
- Distinguish "formatted correctly" from "verified as real" and report both.
- Preserve the author's source list; do not silently drop entries you cannot verify —
  mark them for review.