Two a.m., final read-through, and there it is. A sentence with a specific date, a specific number, and zero citation behind it. Anyone who’s pulled an all-nighter before a paper deadline knows that exact stomach drop, the one where you reread the sentence three times hoping a footnote will materialize out of nowhere.
u/Perfect_Pie8446, a senior history major over on r/PromptEngineering, learned that lesson the hard way. “I know I read that somewhere” doesn’t survive a professor who wants receipts. Neither does “I’m pretty sure that’s right,” which is the phrase that got them into this mess in the first place. So now, before anything gets submitted, the whole draft runs through one prompt built specifically to hunt down naked claims.
I love this one because it does exactly one job and refuses to do anything else. No rewriting, no polishing, no guessing. Just a flashlight pointed at the gaps you stopped seeing after your fifth read-through, back when every sentence still looked equally trustworthy.
⚠️ Why It Matters
Most citation checks fail for one reason: they try to do two things at once. They check if a claim is true and if it’s sourced, and those get tangled together fast, especially when you’re exhausted and just want the tool to tell you everything’s fine.
This prompt splits them apart on purpose. It only asks “did you cite this,” never “is this correct.” That narrow focus is what makes it fast enough to run the night before a deadline instead of eating your last free hour. A tool trying to verify truth needs time and outside sources. A tool checking for the presence of a citation needs neither, which is exactly why this one can run in a couple of minutes flat.
The real danger this prompt guards against is subtler than a missing footnote. Ask most AI tools to check citations and they’ll happily invent a source that sounds plausible, complete with a real-sounding journal name and a page number that doesn’t exist. A made-up citation is worse than an honest gap, because a professor who catches a fake source stops trusting every other page, and now you’re defending your whole paper instead of just one sentence. The line “do not add sources you can’t see” is doing all the heavy lifting here.
One commenter, u/Fine_Definition_2751, put it perfectly: by the 3am read-through your brain auto-fills citations that were never actually there. This prompt exists because your own memory becomes an unreliable narrator right when you need it most, confidently vouching for sentences it has no actual proof for.
🛠️ How To Run It
Here’s the exact prompt, reproduced as the original author wrote it:
You are checking my paper for unsupported claims. Do not fact-check whether they’re true. Only check whether I cited them.
Here is my paper with its footnotes/citations:
{{paste it}}Go paragraph by paragraph and list:
- Every factual or interpretive claim that has no citation attached.
- For each, quote the exact sentence.
- Rank them by how likely a strict reader is to challenge it (a specific date or figure ranks high, general context ranks lower).
Do not rewrite my paper. Do not add sources you can’t see. Just show me the gaps.
Running it is simple:
- Paste your full draft in, footnotes and all, where it says {{paste it}}. Leave the citations attached so the model can actually match claims to sources instead of guessing.
- Let the model go paragraph by paragraph instead of skimming the whole thing at once. That’s what catches the claim buried in paragraph twelve, the one you added during a revision at midnight and never circled back to.
- You get back a list of unsupported sentences, quoted exactly, ranked by how likely a strict reader is to challenge them.
- Work the list top to bottom. Specific dates and figures first, general context claims last. If you’re short on time, at least clear the top few before you submit.
That ranking step is the part most people skip when they try to build something similar themselves. Without it, you’re just staring at a flat list with no idea where to spend your limited time, and limited time is exactly what you have at two in the morning.
💡 Tips & Tricks
- Run this on anything with citations, not just history papers. Research reports, grant proposals, and long-form blog posts with sourced claims all work the same way.
- Keep the “don’t add sources you can’t see” line no matter how you tweak the prompt. Drop it and you’re trading one problem for a worse one, a fake citation that reads as confidently as a real one.
- For long papers, feed it section by section instead of the whole document at once. It stays more accurate on shorter chunks, and you avoid the model quietly skimming past claims in the middle.
- Remember what this prompt won’t do: it won’t judge whether your sources are actually good ones. That part’s still on you, so don’t treat a clean report as a stamp of academic approval.
- Pair it with an actual citation check once the gaps are filled. This tool finds what’s missing, it doesn’t grade what’s already there.
🏴☠️ Give It A Try
As one Redditor joked in the comments, this thread would’ve saved them a rough week. Save yourself the same regret and run your next draft through this before you hit submit.
Hop over to the original r/PromptEngineering thread to see the full discussion and more reactions from other students who’ve been burned by the same thing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Won’t the AI just invent sources?
That’s exactly why the “don’t add sources you can’t see” line is non-negotiable. Without it, the LLM gets confidently wrong, like citing a 2019 Medium post as proof for your French Revolution paper. The safety guardrail keeps it from hallucinating instead of saying “I don’t see a source for this.”
Q: I got 40 flagged claims. Do I fix all of them?
No. The prompt ranks them by how much a strict professor will care (specific dates and figures rank high, general context ranks low). Use that to triage. If you’ve got an hour left, hit the risky ones and work down if time allows.
Q: Does this check if my sources are actually good?
No, it’s only checking whether claims are cited, not whether the sources are solid or credible. It’ll flag naked claims, but you still have to read your sources and make sure they actually support what you’re saying. That part’s on you.
Q: When should I use this, right before I submit?
Earlier, if you can. By the 3am final read, your brain auto-fills missing citations and you stop noticing gaps. Run it when you’re awake enough to actually research and find sources, not when you’re hoping no one notices.
Here’s a prompt that flags every claim in your paper that doesn’t have a source ye
by u/Perfect_Pie8446 in PromptEngineering