Citevahti

Does the cited paper actually support the claim? Check every citation in your manuscript — before a reviewer does.

CiteVahti walks you through your manuscript one claim at a time. You decide whether each cited source really backs the sentence; an optional AI gives a blinded second opinion (you rate first, it can never overrule you); and every decision is saved as a timestamped, tamper-evident record on your own computer.

Free while in beta. CiteVahti is local-first: your manuscript stays on your device unless you choose to turn on an external AI model. No account. Nothing uploaded.

What beta means here: the review workflow and your data format are stable, but the tool is young and your feedback still shapes it. The app does not update itself yet — when a new version ships you replace it yourself (steps under Updating, below; the panel can check for a newer version, but only if you turn that on). If something is confusing or judged wrong, say so — beta reports are how it improves.

Who it's for

Researchers, clinicians, and students who write papers and want to be sure every citation holds up — without learning new software or touching a command line. If you can open a file on your computer, you can use CiteVahti.

What it does for you

• Catches citations that don't support the sentence they're attached to — the kind a reviewer or editor will flag.
• Keeps you in charge. You make every call; the AI is only ever a second opinion, shown after you've decided.
• Leaves a clean paper trail — a timestamped record of what you checked and concluded, ready for a supervisor, co-author, journal, or registry.
• Builds a reusable evidence map so you don't re-do the same checks next project.
• Stays private by default — everything lives in a folder on your Mac or PC.

Get started in 2 minutes — no terminal, ever

On a Mac, use the desktop app. It's a normal app: download it, open it, review.

1. Download citevahti-<version>-macos-arm64.app.zip from the latest release.
2. Unzip it and drag CiteVahti.app into your Applications folder, then open it like any other app. (It's signed and notarized — it opens with no security warnings.)
3. Choose a folder to keep your reviews in when it asks.
4. Drag your manuscript (.docx or .md) onto the window. The panel walks you through the rest, one step at a time — there's nothing to memorise.

Want an AI assistant to help pre-screen citations? Whenever you're ready, click the CiteVahti menu-bar icon → Start Agent Server. CiteVahti first explains exactly what an assistant can and cannot do — and either way, you rate every claim yourself and make every final call.

Or: use it inside Claude Desktop

If you already work in Claude, install CiteVahti as a one-click extension and drive the review by chatting. (This is also the path on Windows and Linux, where the desktop app isn't available yet.)

1. Download the extension for your computer from the latest release:
   • macOS (Apple Silicon) — citevahti-<version>-macos-arm64.mcpb (signed + notarized)
   • Windows — citevahti-<version>-windows-x64.mcpb
   • Linux — citevahti-<version>-linux-x64.mcpb
2. Double-click the downloaded file to add it to Claude Desktop.
3. Choose a folder for your reviews when asked.
4. Tell your assistant: "Check the claims in my manuscript using CiteVahti."

First time on macOS you may see a one-time security prompt — the extension is a zip, which macOS can't pre-stamp even though the app inside is signed and notarized. If it appears: right-click the file → Open, or go to System Settings → Privacy & Security → "Open Anyway". After that it installs and runs normally.

First time on Windows you may see a SmartScreen warning ("Windows protected your PC") — the Windows build is unsigned, so Windows can't check who published it. If it appears: click More info, then Run anyway. After that it installs and runs normally.

pip install "citevahti[mcp]"
citevahti demo

pip install "citevahti[mcp]"
citevahti run

pip install "citevahti[app]"
citevahti-app

How it works

CiteVahti always tells you the one next thing to do — there's no command to remember and nothing to set up.

You start by adding your manuscript — choose a Word or Markdown file, drag it onto the window, or paste the text. Nothing is uploaded.

Then you work through each claim on a simple card that walks a visible Rate → Reveal → Decide → Write path, so you always know where you are:

1. Rate — you judge whether the cited paper supports the claim.
2. Reveal — now the optional AI second opinion appears (never before).
3. Decide — accept, caution, review, or reject. The decision is yours.
4. Write — optionally update your manuscript or Zotero, always after a preview.

A record you can hand to anyone

Every decision is saved to a timestamped, tamper-evident review record — a plain-language log of what you reviewed and in what order. Export it as a Word document, a print-ready report, or a review-packet .zip (which even includes an auto-filled methods paragraph with your review's real numbers) for a methods section, a co-author, a supervisor, or a journal.

Build an evidence map you can reuse

Stop losing evidence work after each project. Most citation checks vanish after one manuscript or one deadline. Every claim you assess in CiteVahti is saved to your own private evidence map, so next time you work on the same topic you don't start from zero — pull back earlier judgments, see what you already checked, and spot where the literature is thin, contradictory, or overclaimed.

It stays on your machine. Sharing into the wider, de-identified community evidence map is a separate, opt-in step, and you preview the exact payload before anything is sent — never your manuscript, search history, patient data, registry data, or private project identifiers.

How your data is handled →

The AI is a second opinion — never the judge

You always rate first. CiteVahti can then show a second rating from an AI, and compare the two — but the AI value stays hidden until your rating is in, and the final decision is always yours. There's no hidden AI subscription: pick the mode you want, or leave AI off entirely.

You can get the second opinion from:

• your MCP assistant (e.g. Claude Desktop),
• a local model on your own computer (free, fully private — see below), or
• your own OpenAI/Anthropic-compatible API key.

Privacy Policy

CiteVahti is local-first. Full policy: https://vahtian.com/citevahti/privacy (source: docs/PRIVACY.md). In short:

• No telemetry, no analytics, no account — CiteVahti collects nothing about you and nothing for us, and never phones home.
• Your manuscript, ratings, and review record stay in a folder on your computer.
• The panel runs only on your own machine (loopback, 127.0.0.1).
• AI is optional and blinded; local and bring-your-own-key modes are supported.
• Changes to Zotero or your manuscript always require a preview and your confirmation, and can be undone.
• Outbound calls are enumerated, not hidden. The main ones: the literature services you choose to search (PubMed, OpenAlex, Semantic Scholar, Crossref), your Zotero if you connect it, the optional AI second opinion (off by default; API mode sends the claim plus the paper's title and abstract to the provider you configure), a user-initiated check to PyPI for a newer version, a one-time Pandoc download if you ask for a Word export without Pandoc installed, and opt-in RFC 3161 timestamping (audit-head hash only). The complete table — destination, payload, trigger, default — is in docs/PRIVACY.md.

What CiteVahti writes

CiteVahti never silently changes Zotero or your manuscript. Every write follows the same gate:

Preview → Confirm → Audit → Undo available

What it does and does not check

CiteVahti checks citation support, not the truth of the underlying claims. It tests whether the cited paper backs the sentence — it does not certify that every claim in the manuscript was entered, and it is not a clinical or scientific oracle. Blinding is enforced by the workflow (the AI value is withheld until you rate) and recorded in the review record with timestamps, so the order is auditable, not assumed.

Responsibility & disclosure

CiteVahti is a local-first citation-support audit tool for manuscript claims — it helps authors test whether the cited evidence supports each claim before submission.

Using CiteVahti does not certify scientific truth, manuscript quality, publication suitability, or the absence of citation problems. It provides structured decision support and an audit trail; final responsibility remains with the human author, reviewer, editor, or institution. CiteVahti is developed by the author — any publication, review, teaching, or evaluation that uses it should disclose the tool use and the developer relationship where relevant. Ready-to-adapt disclosure text and the full statement are in docs/DISCLOSURE.md.

Learn more

• Quickstart — your first citation check, step by step
• Writing good (atomic) claims
• Reporting in your methods section
• Known limitations
• Responsibility, disclosure & conflict of interest
• Contributor privacy

Technical documentation (architecture, CLI, safety invariants, SBOM) lives under the "For developers" toggle above and in docs/.

Feedback & support

CiteVahti is a free beta and your feedback shapes it.

• Found a bug, or a citation judged wrong? Open an issue — there are quick forms for a bug and for a wrong support judgment.
• Have an idea? Request a feature.
• Anything private or security-related? Email [email protected] — please don't open a public issue.

New here? Open the app and drag a manuscript in — or follow the Quickstart step by step.

Companion: FullVahti

FullVahti is a sibling Zotero plugin that finds free, legal open-access PDFs for your references and writes CiteVahti's check results back as tags — so the citation check and the full text live in one place. See the FullVahti README to install (a two-click Zotero plugin, no terminal).

License

Apache License 2.0 — see LICENSE and NOTICE.