Skill Source Citations

What it does

When your agent uses it

• Creating skills
• Updating SKILL.md
• Doing web research for skills
• Auditing missing sources

Example prompts

• “Use the skill-source-citations skill to require durable citations when authoring or researching Agent Skills—maintain references/sources.md per…”
• “/skill-source-citations”

Requirements

• Node.js

Workflow steps

5 steps, taken from the first numbered list in SKILL.md.

1. 1Before writing — list URLs you will rely on in references/sources.md (can start sparse).
2. 2In SKILL.md — link to spec/docs inline where non-obvious; prefer references/ for long material.
3. 3After research — append new rows + changelog entry; never leave “we read X” only in chat.
4. 4In PR — one line in description: “Sources updated in references/sources.md.”
5. 5Validate — pnpm run validate warns if sources.md is missing.

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 62f3ee1. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

• Tool permissions

  Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.

  From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

• Runs code

  Shell commands in SKILL.md call:

  • npx
  • pnpm

  From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

• Network

  Hosts in commands or code, which the agent is likely to contact:

  • agentskills.io

  From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

• Credentials

  Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.

  From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

Skill Source Citations loads about 640 tokens when it runs, and up to ~847 if it reads all its reference files. Until then it costs about 73 tokens; SKILL.md has 194 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it

~73

When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches

~640

With references · SKILL.md plus every file in references/, read only if the agent opens them

~847

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from Arenukvern/mcp_flutter at commit 62f3ee1, republished under its MIT licence (© Arenukvern). 194 words, ~640 tokens.

name

skill-source-citations

description

Requires durable citations when authoring or researching Agent Skills—maintain references/sources.md per skill, link external research, and record provenance in PRs. Use when creating skills, updating SKILL.md, doing web research for skills, or auditing missing sources.

license

MIT

type

governance

metadata.author

skill-steward

metadata.version

1.0.0

metadata.category

marketplace

# Sources

| Topic | URL | Used for |
|-------|-----|----------|
| Agent Skills spec | https://agentskills.io/ | Frontmatter rules |
| … | … | … |

## Changelog

- 2026-05-29: initial citations

npx skills add arenukvern/skill_steward --skill skill-source-citations

© Arenukvern, MIT. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

SKILL.md and 2 other files (references) in .agents/skills/skill-source-citations of Arenukvern/mcp_flutter.

• SKILL.md
• references/citation-template.md
• references/sources.md

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 62f3ee1