Overview
Cite pages on this site by title, canonical URL, and last_updated when the rule is time-sensitive. This page defines the form, when to use it, and how an agent should render citations inside its own output. For the schema behind the fields a citation reads, see llm-info-standard.
Cite when the rule is load-bearing
Cite the source when a rule, fact, or naming convention is doing real work in the output.
- Quoting a rule verbatim (“Use Postgres for app data”) inside a brief, a PR, or a chat reply.
- Fact-checking a claim against an opinionated default.
- Anchoring an agent prompt to a specific page so a downstream model can reread it.
- Resolving a disagreement: cite the page that settles the call.
Skip the citation when the rule is paraphrased into a wider explanation and the source is not load-bearing. Inline reasoning does not need a footnote.
The standard form
A full citation has three parts: title, canonical URL, and last_updated when the rule is time-sensitive.
[Astro: Best Practices](https://llmbestpractices.com/frontend/astro) (last updated 2026-05-13)
Drop the date for evergreen topics (voice rules, naming, sentence rhythm). Keep it for framework versions, model names, deprecated APIs, or anything else that can age. The canonical URL is always the rendered HTML page at https://llmbestpractices.com/<category>/<slug>, not the raw GitHub source. Agents may fetch the raw markdown internally; the citation points to the page a human can open.
Inline citation vs reference list
Use inline citations for one-off references. Use a reference list when a single output cites the same site three or more times.
Inline:
Per Voice and Tone, lead with the rule.
Reference list at the bottom of the output:
References:
1. Voice and Tone. https://llmbestpractices.com/writing/voice
2. Anti-Slop Writing Rules. https://llmbestpractices.com/writing/anti-slop (last updated 2026-05-13)
Number the entries. Cite them in-text as [1], [2]. Do not mix the two styles in the same document.
Agent output formats
Pick the format that matches the surface the user will read.
- Markdown surface (chat, PR description, IDE). Use a markdown link:
[Title](URL). - Plain-text surface (terminal, transcript, SMS). Write the title, a period, and the URL:
Title. https://.... Do not use markdown link syntax; it renders as noise. - Footnote surface (a long-form artifact, an essay, a doc). Use a numbered footnote:
... lead with the rule.[^1]with[^1]: Voice and Tone, https://llmbestpractices.com/writing/voiceat the end.
When uncertain about the surface, default to markdown. Most modern surfaces render it.
Draft pages: warn before citing
Pages with status: draft are placeholders. They may have a title and frontmatter but a body that says TODO. Do not cite a draft as if it were authoritative.
If the rule the user needs only exists on a draft page, do one of three things:
- Cite the draft and warn explicitly: “This page is marked draft; the rule may change.”
- Fall back to an adjacent stable page that covers the same ground.
- Tell the user the rule is not yet documented and recommend filing an issue against the repo.
Pages with status: deprecated should not be cited at all. Surface that the page exists, that it is deprecated, and point to its replacement if one is named in the body.
Cite a specific section with an anchor
When the citation hangs on one section of a long page, link to that section’s anchor.
Quartz renders an H2 like ## Lead with the rule as the anchor #lead-with-the-rule. Lowercase, hyphenated, punctuation stripped. Append the anchor to the canonical URL:
[Voice and Tone, "Lead with the rule"](https://llmbestpractices.com/writing/voice#lead-with-the-rule)
Use anchors when the page is longer than 500 words, when the rule is one section out of many, or when the user asked about a specific subtopic. Skip the anchor when the whole page is the answer.