--- title: "Citations and sources" description: "Verify answers with inline citations and the source viewer." canonical: https://ocho.bot/docs/chat/citations-and-sources last_updated: 2026-07-12 --- # Citations and sources > Verify answers with inline citations and the source viewer. Every grounded answer carries a sources footer — a book icon plus "N sources" and pills naming the datasets the answer drew from (up to four, then "+N"). Many answers also include inline numbered citation markers — small badges like **1**, **2** — but only when the model cites specific passages in its text, so don't be surprised if an answer has a sources footer and no inline badges. ## Preview a citation Hover over a citation marker for a moment to see a preview card: the cited passage (or its summary) and the document name and page (for example, "100m_offers.pdf · p203"). For tables, figures, and charts the card also shows an image preview. The card has exactly two buttons: **Open source** and **Chat about this**. ## Open the source viewer Click a citation badge or an answer's "N sources" footer to open the source viewer — a large dialog that covers most of the screen. (The footer's tooltip says "Open sources sidebar", but it opens this same viewer.) From the Search page, clicking a result card's body does nothing — click the card's **Open source** button instead. Inside the viewer: - **The document** renders on the right — PDFs open to the cited page with the exact passage highlighted; markdown, text, and transcript files highlight the cited span in place. When the cited chunk has a generated summary, a one-line summary sits above the document. To move around a PDF, use the previous/next page arrows and the editable page-number box (for example, "81 / 206") in the document toolbar — the "Page N of M" pill in the header is a read-only indicator, and the zoom ("100%") and **Fit** buttons are disabled placeholders marked "Coming soon". - **The sidebar** on the left is tabbed — one tab shows at a time: **Citations from answer** (every citation from that answer, numbered #1..#N), **Graph neighbors** (related passages from the knowledge graph), and **Search results** (a "Search sources…" box). Which tabs appear depends on where you came from — the Citations tab only shows when you arrived from a chat citation. The search box looks across your sources, not just the cited dataset. - **The mini-graph** at the top of the sidebar shows entities related to the passage as unlabeled dots; use its expand button to open the larger **Graph neighborhood** view, where nodes are labeled. Click a node to hop to that entity's best source passage — the nodes are small, so aim carefully. - **Open in full source doc** (bottom-right, next to **Chat about this**) opens the complete document on its own page in a new browser tab. The viewer header has **Back to chat** (or **Back to results**) and an X to close. Once you've navigated to a second source, **Previous source** / **Next source** arrows also appear in the header to step through the sources you've viewed — don't look for them when you first open the viewer; they aren't there yet. Your browser's Back button does the same: it steps backward through viewed sources, then closes the viewer — it won't dump you out of the chat. ## Chat about a passage Click **Chat about this** on a citation's hover preview card to pre-fill the composer with the excerpt quoted (this also opens the source viewer — close it to get back to the composer). Nothing sends until you press Enter, so you can add your question first. The **Chat about this** button inside the source viewer currently closes the viewer without pre-filling the composer — use the hover card's button if you want the excerpt quoted. ## Good to know - Web-result citations (when web search is in play) don't open the source viewer. The sources footer is a single button that always opens the answer's highest-relevance source — you can't pick a specific source from it — so a web source opens in a new tab only when it happens to be the top-ranked one. An inline citation badge for a web result may do nothing when clicked. - If a markdown or text document changed after it was cited, the highlight is replaced with a note: "Citation highlight unavailable — the document changed since this citation was indexed. It will resolve once re-indexing completes." Transcripts show the same note with "the transcript changed" instead. The note appears only when you're not searching within the viewer, and PDFs don't show an equivalent note. - Ocho drops citations the model invents that don't match a real retrieved source, so numbering always refers to verifiable passages. All docs: https://ocho.bot/docs --- Ocho — AI knowledge orchestration · [Home](https://ocho.bot/) · [Docs](https://ocho.bot/docs) · [Blog](https://ocho.bot/blog) · [About](https://ocho.bot/about) · [Developers](https://ocho.bot/developers) · [Contact](https://ocho.bot/contact) · [llms.txt](https://ocho.bot/llms.txt)