pi-bib

A pi extension for checking bibliography / BibTeX files against CrossRef and Semantic Scholar.

Based on Bibtex-Verifier

This project is based on Bibtex-Verifier. The original project provides a browser-based UI for uploading or pasting BibTeX and reviewing suggested metadata changes interactively.

pi-bib adapts the core idea for pi as a local command-line-style extension.

Improvements / differences:

• Runs directly inside pi via /review:bib.
• Recursively finds .bib files in a project folder.
• Produces a local Markdown report instead of requiring browser interaction.
• Uses @retorquere/bibtex-parser, the parser behind Better BibTeX for Zotero, instead of regex-based BibTeX parsing.
• Reports BibTeX parse issues alongside metadata checks.
• Keeps API lookup logic for CrossRef and Semantic Scholar.
• Uses DOI-first lookup when an entry has a doi field, then falls back to title lookup.
• Writes suggested BibTeX files under pi-bib-suggested/ instead of modifying original .bib files.
• Applies only safe updated field suggestions to generated files; needs_review, not_found, and duplicates remain unchanged for manual review.
• Uses the active pi model as an extra suspicious-match check before applying non-DOI metadata suggestions.
• Adds citation-review guidance to pi's system prompt so the LLM behaves like a skeptical bibliography reviewer when helping with citations.

Install

Once published to npm:

pi install npm:pi-bib

For local development from this folder:

npm install
pi -e .

Commands

/review:bib [path]

Recursively searches for .bib files under path or the current working directory, parses them with @retorquere/bibtex-parser, checks entries against CrossRef and Semantic Scholar, detects duplicate titles, writes a Markdown report, and creates safe suggested BibTeX files.

Lookup order per entry:

1. If a doi field exists, look up the DOI directly in CrossRef and Semantic Scholar.
2. If DOI lookup fails or no DOI is present, fall back to title-based lookup.
3. Compare the found metadata with the local BibTeX entry and report field differences.
4. For non-DOI matches that would otherwise be auto-updated, ask the active pi model whether the local entry and candidate metadata appear to describe the same paper. different or uncertain verdicts are kept as needs_review instead of being applied to suggested files.

Outputs:

pi-bib-report.md
pi-bib-suggested/<same relative path as each checked .bib file>

The suggested files apply safe updated metadata suggestions only. Entries marked needs_review, not_found, or duplicate are kept unchanged so you can inspect them manually.

Ignored folders: node_modules, .git, .pi, dist, pi-bib-suggested.

LLM citation-review guidance

When the extension is loaded, it appends bibliography-review instructions to pi's system prompt. The guidance tells the LLM to:

• treat citations as unverified until validated against reliable metadata
• prefer DOI-based evidence over title-only matches
• avoid inventing missing metadata
• flag suspicious author, title, year, venue, DOI, and duplicate mismatches
• treat updated as a safe suggestion, needs_review as uncertain, and not_found as unvalidated
• inspect pi-bib-report.md first for broad bibliography reviews
• avoid overwriting original .bib files unless explicitly asked

Development

Typecheck:

npm run typecheck

Check what would be published:

npm run pack:dry