Citations & References

Overview

Scribes created with Web Search enabled include real, clickable citations. Wherever the AI explicitly cites a source in the prose, you'll see a small numbered marker like [1] in the text. Click it to see the source title, the domain, and a link that opens the original page in a new tab.

At the end of every chapter that used web sources, a References block appears. References are grouped by section and collapsed by default — tap a section row to expand its source list.

How citations behave by model

Different AI models cite differently. CoffeeScribe shows you whatever the model produced and adapts the layout accordingly. There are three patterns:

• Numbered inline markers — the model writes [1], [2] etc. through the prose and returns matching sources. References render as a numbered list. Models we've verified do this well: Perplexity Sonar / Sonar Pro, Gemini 2.0 Flash, and Qwen 3 235B A22B.
• Bare URLs in the prose — the model writes the source URL directly into the text. The URL is clickable in-place; references at chapter end still appear (see below).
• Sources consulted (no inline citations) — the model used web sources but didn't explicitly cite any specific claim. References render as a bullet list under "Sources consulted" with a one-line note explaining the gap. Models we've seen behave this way: GPT-4o, GPT-4o-mini, Llama 4 Maverick, DeepSeek Chat (full OpenAI family included — even the flagship doesn't reliably mark inline citations).

If you want reliable inline numbered citations, choose a Perplexity model or Gemini 2.0 Flash. Other models are still useful for research, but their citation reliability varies.

Tap the info icon next to a model in the picker to see its Citation behaviour (web search on) line — a one-liner about what to expect from that specific model with web search enabled. The line only appears for the curated Recommended models (the ones we've personally verified). Models from Browse all show an amber "Not in our recommended set" warning instead.

Clicking a marker

Clicking any [1], [2], etc. opens a small popover showing:

• The source's title (or domain if the title is missing)
• The domain (e.g. nytimes.com)
• An Open source button that opens the original URL in a new tab

Press Escape or click outside the popover to close it.

Per-chapter References (grouped by section, collapsible)

At the end of any chapter that used web search, you'll see a References block. Each section in the chapter has its own collapsible row showing the section title and the number of sources it cited. Click the row to expand the list. Click again to collapse. The list is always collapsed by default — useful when a chapter has many sources across many sections.

Sections that didn't return any sources don't appear in the block. Chapters with no sources at all don't show a References block.

Turning off inline markers (Hub viewer)

The Hub viewer respects a "Show inline [N] markers" preference saved to your browser. The full preferences UI for this is being rebuilt (see "What's not supported yet" below) — for now the preference defaults to on and the per-chapter References block always renders regardless. When the toggle UI returns, flipping it off will hide inline [N] markers without removing the chapter-end References list.

Citations when exporting

PDFs include citations by default. You can toggle them on or off in the Preview & Customise step of the export modal:

• Inline: [N] renders as a superscript next to the cited text (only when the model placed markers)
• At chapter end: a References section grouped by section sub-headings with clickable URLs

PDFs are static, so references appear flat under each section sub-heading rather than as a collapsible widget. If a section has no inline markers, its references appear under "Sources consulted (no inline markers in prose):" with bullet points instead of numbers.

The Include citations toggle defaults to on. Switch it off to export a clean copy without markers or references.

Citations in forks and editions

Forking a scribe or creating a new edition deep-copies all citations into the new scribe. You get your own citation rows, so editing them in the new copy won't affect the original.

Citations in the Read tab (EPUB reader)

The Read tab renders an EPUB-style paginated reader. Inline [N] markers in body text render as plain text in this surface (no popover) — but a References block is appended to the end of every chapter that cited sources, with the same numbered / "Sources consulted" pattern as the Hub view. Each source URL is a clickable link.

Downloaded EPUBs (Export → EPUB) get the same chapter-end References block, and respect the Include Citations toggle on the export modal.

What's not supported yet

• Manual edit of citations — you can't add, remove, or rewrite individual sources in v1. The AI's citation list is stored as-is.
• APA / MLA / Chicago formatting — scribes ship with one simple style ([N] Title — domain). Academic citation styles may arrive in a future update.
• Marker variants — [1, 2] or [1-3] style multi-citations render as plain text.
• Quick Reads — the Quick Read pipeline doesn't currently produce citations even with web search on (planned in a future update).
• Reading Preferences toggle UI for inline markers — the storage and render gate work, but the on-screen control to flip it is not currently exposed in the live UI. Coming back in a follow-up update.
• Clickable citation popovers in the Read tab — only the Hub viewer surfaces the title/domain/Open-source popover when you click an [N]. The Read tab shows markers as plain text and relies on the chapter-end References list. Popovers in the Read tab are tracked as a follow-up.

Troubleshooting

The model gave me 5 sources but no [N] markers appear in the text. This is normal for some models. CoffeeScribe renders these as a "Sources consulted" bullet list at chapter end so you can still see what informed the answer. To get numbered inline markers, regenerate the section using a Perplexity model or Gemini 2.0 Flash.

The references list is empty even though I turned web search on. The model may not have found relevant sources, or it emitted them in an unrecognised format. Try regenerating the section, or switch to a Perplexity model for the most reliable behaviour.

The popover shows the domain instead of a title. Some sources don't come back with a title from the search provider. The domain is the fallback — the Open source link still works.

I see duplicates in the References block of different chapters. That's expected — each chapter shows its own sources. If the same URL is cited in chapter 1 and chapter 3, both chapters list it independently.