# Citations

How answers cite passages, how citations are checked and what happens to one that fails.

Every answer cites the passages it used, by chunk ID in square brackets:

```text
Open Sales and click Record sale [record-a-sale.md#1.0].
```

The part before `#` names the document. For a document you uploaded, it begins with the first eight characters of its source ID.

## Only what was retrieved

An answer may cite only the passages retrieved for that question, from your workspace. Lornos checks each ID as the answer streams. An ID that wasn't retrieved for this request is removed, and the answer ends with a note:

> Citation check: removed 1 unverified source ID; statements that relied on them are not verified.

The number counts the IDs that were removed. The statements stay, so your users can see what was said and that it isn't backed by a source.

## At most five

An answer cites at most five distinct passages.

## Follow-up questions

Each question gets its own retrieval. Earlier answers only tell Lornos what the new question refers to; they are never used as evidence, and their citations don't carry over.

## No match, no citations

When the workspace has no searchable sources, or nothing in them matches, the answer is a short fixed reply with no citations. The [Playground](https://lornos.dev/docs/playground.md) page quotes both.