Use when formatting references for journal submission, converting between citation styles (APA, MLA, Vancouver, Chicago), generating bibliographies for manuscripts, or ensuring consistent reference formatting. Automatically formats citations and bibliographies in 1000+ academic styles. Ensures reference accuracy, completeness, and compliance with journal requirements. Supports batch conversion and integration with reference managers.
62
53%
Does it follow best practices?
Impact
Pending
No eval scenarios have been run
Passed
No known issues
Optimize this skill with Tessl
npx tessl skill review --optimize ./scientific-skills/Academic Writing/citation-formatter/SKILL.mdQuality
Discovery
100%Based on the skill's description, can an agent find and select it at the right time? Clear, specific descriptions lead to better discovery.
This is a strong skill description that clearly defines its purpose, lists concrete actions, includes an explicit 'Use when...' clause with natural trigger terms, and occupies a distinct niche. The description effectively combines both capability statements and trigger guidance, using appropriate third-person voice throughout. The specific citation style names and academic terminology make it highly discoverable for its target use case.
| Dimension | Reasoning | Score |
|---|---|---|
Specificity | Lists multiple specific concrete actions: formatting references, converting between citation styles (with named examples APA, MLA, Vancouver, Chicago), generating bibliographies, ensuring consistent formatting, batch conversion, and integration with reference managers. | 3 / 3 |
Completeness | Clearly answers both 'what' (formats citations and bibliographies in 1000+ styles, ensures accuracy and compliance, supports batch conversion) and 'when' with an explicit 'Use when...' clause listing specific trigger scenarios like formatting references for journal submission and converting between citation styles. | 3 / 3 |
Trigger Term Quality | Excellent coverage of natural terms users would say: 'references', 'journal submission', 'citation styles', 'APA', 'MLA', 'Vancouver', 'Chicago', 'bibliographies', 'manuscripts', 'reference formatting', 'reference managers'. These are all terms a researcher would naturally use. | 3 / 3 |
Distinctiveness Conflict Risk | Highly distinctive niche focused specifically on academic citation and bibliography formatting. The mention of specific citation styles (APA, MLA, Vancouver, Chicago), journal submission, and reference managers creates a clear, narrow domain unlikely to conflict with other skills. | 3 / 3 |
Total | 12 / 12 Passed |
Implementation
7%Reviews the quality of instructions and guidance provided to agents. Good implementation is clear, handles edge cases, and produces reliable results.
This skill is heavily padded with generic boilerplate that is not specific to citation formatting. The core capabilities sections contain only placeholder code, the Quick Start has conflicting imports, and the workflow is entirely generic. The skill would benefit enormously from being stripped down to actual citation formatting examples with real input/output pairs showing specific style conversions.
Suggestions
Replace placeholder code in Core Capabilities with real, executable examples showing actual citation input and formatted output in different styles (e.g., show the same reference in APA, Vancouver, and Chicago format).
Remove all duplicated content: the description appears verbatim in 'When to Use', 'Key Features', and the second 'When to Use This Skill' section. Consolidate into one concise section.
Remove generic boilerplate sections (Quality Checklist, Response Template, Output Requirements, Input Validation) that contain no citation-specific guidance and waste tokens.
Add a concrete workflow with validation steps specific to citation formatting, such as: parse input references → validate required fields → apply style rules → verify output format → check DOI resolution.
| Dimension | Reasoning | Score |
|---|---|---|
Conciseness | Extremely verbose and repetitive. The description is copy-pasted verbatim into 'When to Use' and 'Key Features' sections. Multiple redundant sections cover the same ground (two 'When to Use' sections, repeated workflow descriptions). Generic boilerplate like 'Quality Checklist', 'Output Requirements', 'Response Template', and 'Input Validation' sections add bulk without citation-specific value. Much content explains things Claude already knows. | 1 / 3 |
Actionability | The Quick Start code references modules (scripts.main, scripts.citation_formatter) that may not exist and shows two conflicting import patterns. The 'Core Capabilities' sections 1-4 contain only placeholder pseudocode (`result = tool.execute(data)`) with no real implementation. The command-line example is plausible but untestable without knowing the actual script's interface. No concrete citation format examples (e.g., actual APA vs Vancouver output) are provided. | 1 / 3 |
Workflow Clarity | The workflow section is entirely generic ('Confirm the user objective', 'Validate that the request matches the documented scope') with no citation-formatting-specific steps. There are no validation checkpoints for verifying citation correctness. The 'Example run plan' is also generic. No feedback loops for handling malformed references or conversion errors. Multiple workflow-like sections exist but none provide clear, sequenced, domain-specific steps. | 1 / 3 |
Progressive Disclosure | References to external files (references/guide.md, references/examples/, references/api-docs/) are present and clearly signaled. However, the main document itself is a monolithic wall of text with excessive inline content that should be separated. The structure has many sections but they are poorly organized with redundancy and unclear hierarchy. | 2 / 3 |
Total | 5 / 12 Passed |
Validation
90%Checks the skill against the spec for correct structure and formatting. All validation checks must pass before discovery and implementation can be scored.
Validation — 10 / 11 Passed
Validation for skill structure
| Criteria | Description | Result |
|---|---|---|
frontmatter_unknown_keys | Unknown frontmatter key(s) found; consider removing or moving to metadata | Warning |
Total | 10 / 11 Passed | |
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