[cu1ch3n]

Why

An agent can add a .bib entry for a work that does not exist, or with the wrong authors, year or DOI. Until now a .bib change showed up in the review as a truncated word diff of source lines, or only as the typeset bibliography line of a cited entry, and nothing was checked.

What changes

Reviews (review engine)

• A .bib change is shown entry by entry: every field, old → new for modified fields, the lines it occupies, and where the paper cites it. Hunks of one entry are decided together, so an entry is never half accepted. Changes to @string definitions, including nested macros, show the old and new expanded fields. Bibliography files share macros in declaration order, so a definition change also checks dependent entries in unchanged files. Dependent hunks in one file are grouped; when multiple files change, every affected edit displays the entry and has the acceptance guard.
• Added and modified entries are looked up online: DOI via doi.org, arXiv id via arXiv, otherwise title + authors in Crossref, DBLP and arXiv. Each entry is Verified, Differs from the record (fields side by side, with a link), Not verified, or Could not check. Results are cached in .git/latex-review. Cache keys and manual confirmations include the entry type, so changing an article into a book triggers a new check.
• Flagged without any lookup: removed entries the paper still cites, duplicate keys, a .bib file the paper does not read, new \cite keys without an entry, including in documents that use \nocite{*}.
• Accepting a change with an entry that is not verified asks first; Accept all leaves such changes for the author. I checked it myself marks an entry as checked by hand until its looked-up fields change.

Papilot

• The review gateway and the uncommitted-changes view pass the new routes through; confirmations are shared through the repository.
• Settings → Check references online (on by default; only titles, authors, years and identifiers are sent).
• Agents are told never to write a bibliography entry from memory and to include its DOI or arXiv id.
• More under Manuscript in the sidebar opens a submenu (a sheet on phones) with Reference check: the whole bibliography on disk — citations without an entry, duplicate keys, the same work under two keys, uncited entries, unreadable entries, and an online check of every entry. Ask an agent to look into opens an editable new task that asks the agent to change nothing and find out what happened with each problem (does the work exist, what does its record say, where did the entry come from in Git).

How it was checked

• Papilot build and typecheck; review engine build and typecheck.
• Application reference/proxy, changes and review-state checks pass (9 passed, 1 skipped); all 155 review-engine tests pass, including 35 bibliography/checker tests.
• Four bibliography browser tests cover entry display, guarded acceptance, visible macro-expansion changes, and acceptance guards on every edit affected by cross-file macros. A real TeX/BibTeX regression verifies cross-file macro expansion and citation wrappers/code examples. Regression tests cover nested macro edits and partial acceptance, missing citations with \nocite{*}, type-sensitive caching, old cache invalidation and manual confirmations.
• Papilot's review-flow browser checks pass, covering inline commits, answer-only tasks, acceptance and undo, review history, and mobile layouts.

Known issues

• scripts/check-ui.mjs:524 (focus after collapsing the manuscript panel) is flaky: it failed once in two runs on a clean origin/main too. Engine browser tests review.spec.ts:7 and :359 also fail on main.
• DBLP currently answers every client with a bot check, so it is skipped and entries say so; checks rely on Crossref, doi.org and arXiv.
• Several entries inserted as one contiguous block stay one change: accepting them one by one would conflict in the three-way merge.
• The online-check switch is stored per browser.

TODO

Reference check page

• Group problems by kind (missing citations, differs, not found, duplicates, uncited) in collapsible sections; today "not found" books and reports make one long list.
• Show progress as "n of m checked" with a spinner on each entry; tidy the summary line when it wraps.
• Jump from a citation place to the PDF (SyncTeX forward) and from an entry to its .bib lines.
• "I checked it myself" for several selected entries at once.
• Bring the agent's findings back onto the page, entry by entry, instead of only in the task's chat.
• Say "DBLP could not be reached" once for the whole check rather than under every entry.
• One verb for the action across the review, the page and Settings (检查 / 核对 are mixed).

Review cards

• Fold long author lists and long fields, with "show all".
• Fold the unchanged fields of a modified entry.
• Polish the phone layout of the field table, the record comparison and the confirm dialog.

Sidebar

• Decide what else belongs under More (LaTeX warnings, consistency?) and whether the closed row shows a count.
• Revisit the icon and the active state of the More row while the check page is open.

Sources and tests

• A book source (Open Library or Google Books) to cut false "not found" for books.
• A UI check for the More menu and the reference check page in scripts/.

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