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Dev.to
7/17/2026
I built a CLI that checks whether the references in your bibliography actually exist

I built a CLI that checks whether the references in your bibliography actually exist

Short summary

citecheck is an open-source CLI that verifies bibliography references against Crossref, OpenAlex, and DOAJ APIs to catch hallucinated or retracted citations. It auto-detects BibTeX, RIS, and CSL-JSON formats, uses DOI-first lookup with fuzzy title fallback, and requires no API key or signup. The tool addresses a real problem: LLMs like GPT-4o still fabricate roughly one in five references in some benchmarks.

  • •Open-source CLI checks .bib/.ris/CSL-JSON references against Crossref, OpenAlex, and DOAJ
  • •Detects hallucinated references, retracted papers, and non-existent DOIs with no API key needed
  • •Available via npx citecheck; MIT licensed on GitHub

Generated with AI, which can make mistakes.

#ai-tools#open-source
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