Citations

Overview

• Citations allow Claude to reference outside sources when generating answers
• Users can verify that Claude's responses are based on actual documents rather than just generated text
• Citations work with both PDF documents and plain text

Citation Page Location (for PDFs)

• Used when Claude cites information from PDF documents
• Contains five key components:
• Cited text: The exact text from the source document supporting the statement
• Document index: Identifies which document is being referenced
• Document title: The name of the source document (e. g. , earth. pdf)
• Start page: Where the cited information begins
• End page: Where the cited information ends

Citation Char Location (for Plain Text)

• Used when Claude cites information from plain text sources
• Provides character position within the text block instead of page numbers
• Allows precise location tracking within unstructured text

Implementation

• Enable citations by adding a citations field with enabled: true to the request
• Include a title field to identify the source document
• Specify type as either "document" (PDF) or "text" (plain text)
• For text sources, set media_type to "text/plain"

User Interface Benefits

• Citations enable building interfaces with hover-over pop-ups showing source information
• Users can verify Claude's accuracy by checking the original source documents
• Increases transparency and trustworthiness of AI-generated responses

Takeaways

• Citations allow Claude to reference and verify information from external sources (PDFs or plain text), making responses traceable to actual documents
• For PDFs, citations include the exact cited text, document title, and page range; for plain text, they provide character positions instead of page numbers
• Enable citations by adding citations: enabled: true to the request along with document title and type fields
• Citation features support UI elements like hover-over pop-ups that display source information, increasing transparency and user trust in AI responses