Check whether a PDF quote is on the cited page

Finding a phrase in a PDF is not the same as checking its citation. anymd Pro's cite_check operation tests whether a quote occurs in extracted evidence on the specified physical page, inside a specified box. It checks quote and location support, not whether the statement is true, and does not independently confirm OCR accuracy.

Free reading, searching and PDF inspection stay MIT licensed and ungated. See current Pro pricing.

Make a PDF you can reproduce

Use Node.js 18+, npm, Python 3 and a POSIX shell. The fixture generator uses only Python's standard library; no font files, model, OCR engine or API key are needed.

mkdir anymd-citations && cd anymd-citations
npm install --no-save @sylphx/anymd@8.5.5
curl -fsSLO https://sylphxai.github.io/anymd/examples/mcp-call.mjs
curl -fsSLO https://sylphxai.github.io/anymd/examples/make-citation-pdf.py
python3 make-citation-pdf.py

The generator writes citation.pdf, a one-page 612 × 792 PDF with native text Deterministic quote at (50, 700). The MCP client starts the installed release, confines file access to this directory and prints the tool result. It does not upload the PDF.

Free: read and find a quote

node mcp-call.mjs read '{"source":"citation.pdf","ocr":false,"images":"none"}'
node mcp-call.mjs search '{"query":"Deterministic quote","sources":["citation.pdf"],"mode":"literal","case_sensitive":true}'

Expect the phrase in the extracted text and a search hit on page 1. Search helps you find candidate evidence; it does not validate a caller-supplied bounding box.

Pro: check quote and location together

With an existing licence activated, run:

node mcp-call.mjs inspect '{"operation":"cite_check","sources":[{"path":"citation.pdf"}],"citations":[{"id":"supported","quote":"Deterministic quote","page":1,"bounding_box":{"left":0,"bottom":0,"right":612,"top":792}},{"id":"wrong-location","quote":"Deterministic quote","page":1,"bounding_box":{"left":0,"bottom":0,"right":10,"top":10}}]}'

The first box deliberately covers the whole page: it tests page membership, not a precise crop. Expect verified_exact for supported and unmatched for wrong-location. The result keeps the source hash and supporting locations. Native character geometry is labelled char_estimated, not exact glyph bounds. For a real citation, supply the actual box you want to test.

Without a licence, a valid request returns the Pro message and does no citation work. The normal MCP text response is not a verified citation.

Treat missing evidence differently from a non-match

Verdict	What to do
verified_exact	Keep the original quote, source hash, page and supporting locations
verified_normalized	Keep the explicit normalization policy as well as the evidence
unmatched	Complete admissible evidence did not support the quote at that location
insufficient_evidence	Do not decide: resolve the source, extraction, OCR or geometry gap

Matching is case-sensitive. The default performs no normalization; explicit whitespace_v1 only collapses whitespace and trims boundaries. It does not fix punctuation, case, hyphenation or OCR mistakes. A scan without requested OCR is insufficient evidence, not proof that the quote is absent.

Pages are one-based physical pages, not printed labels. Boxes use bottom-left PDF coordinates. For a source you have already hashed, pass expected_source_sha256; a mismatch returns insufficient evidence without extraction. There can be several supported occurrences: presence is not uniqueness.

The cite-check reference covers request limits, optional OCR, geometry granularity, hash checks and failure cases.

See current Pro pricing.