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validate-bib

Validate bibliography entries against citations in manuscript and Quarto book files. Find missing entries, unused references, potential typos, and quality issues. This skill should be used when asked to "check the bibliography", "validate citations", or "validate-bib".

Published by brycewang-stanford ↗brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills

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validate-bib

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Use validate-bib to validate the manuscript and book citations against the bibliography and provide a report of missing entries, unused references, likely key typos, and entry-quality issues.

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    SKILL.md

    name: validate-bibdescription: Validate bibliography entries against citations in manuscript and Quarto book files. Find missing entries, unused references, potential typos, and quality issues. This skill should be used when asked to "check the bibliography", "validate citations", or "validate-bib".allowed-tools: ["Read", "Grep", "Glob"]

    Validate Bibliography

    Cross-reference all citations in manuscript and book files against bibliography entries.

    Workflow

    Step 1: Read the bibliography

    Read docs/overleaf/refs.bib and extract all citation keys.

    Step 2: Scan all files for citation keys

    • .tex files in docs/overleaf/: look for \textcite{, \parencite{, \cite{, \citet{, \citep{, \citeauthor{, \citeyear{}
    • .qmd files in book/: look for @key, [@key], [@key1; @key2]
    • Extract all unique citation keys used

    Step 3: Cross-reference

    • Missing entries (CRITICAL): Citations used in files but NOT in refs.bib
    • Unused entries (informational): Entries in refs.bib not cited anywhere
    • Potential typos: Similar-but-not-matching keys (Levenshtein distance)

    Step 4: Check entry quality

    For each bib entry:

    • Required fields present (author, title, year, journal/booktitle)
    • Author field properly formatted (Last, First and Last, First)
    • Year is reasonable (1900-2026)
    • No malformed characters or encoding issues
    • Entry type appropriate (@article, @incollection, @techreport, etc.)

    Step 5: Report findings

    ## Bibliography Validation Report
**Date:** YYYY-MM-DD
**Bibliography:** docs/overleaf/refs.bib
**Total entries:** N
**Files scanned:** N .tex + N .qmd

### Missing Entries (CRITICAL)
| Citation Key | Used In | Line |
|-------------|---------|------|
| ... | ... | ... |

### Unused Entries
| Citation Key | Entry Type |
|-------------|------------|
| ... | ... |

### Potential Typos
| Used Key | Similar Bib Key | File |
|----------|----------------|------|
| ... | ... | ... |

### Quality Issues
| Citation Key | Issue |
|-------------|-------|
| ... | Missing journal field |

    Files to scan

    docs/overleaf/*.tex
book/*.qmd

    Bibliography location

    docs/overleaf/refs.bib