Cite

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Cite renders LaTeX- or Pandoc-style citations in Obsidian and links them to reference notes containing BibTeX. It works in Live Preview and Reading view, provides citation-key completion, and can render a lightweight bibliography.

Cite 0.1.0 requires Obsidian 1.12.7 or later. Desktop, iOS, and Android are supported.

Features

• Render \cite{key} or [@key] as numbered internal links.
• Complete citation keys by key or title while typing.
• Generate a bibliography at \bibliography.
• Resolve one or more BibTeX entries from each reference note.
• Reindex automatically when reference notes are created, edited, moved, or deleted.
• Keep code, frontmatter, and math examples unchanged.

Setup

1. Open Settings → Cite and choose a Reference folder. Cite does not scan the whole vault when this setting is empty.

2. Add a fenced bibtex block to a Markdown note in that folder:

   @article{doe2026,
     author  = {Doe, Jane and Yamada, Taro},
     title   = {An Example Paper},
     journal = {Journal of Examples},
     year    = {2026},
     volume  = {4},
     number  = {2},
     pages   = {10--20}
   }
   

3. Type a citation in another note:

   Prior work discusses this problem \cite{doe2026}.
   

4. Add \bibliography on its own paragraph where the bibliography should appear.

Choose Pandoc in settings to use [@doe2026] and [@doe2026; @smith2025]. Locators, prefixes, suffixes, and suppressed-author Pandoc citations are not supported in this release.

BibTeX support

Cite supports common article, book, inproceedings/conference, incollection, inbook, proceedings, misc, and fallback entry types. Braced and quoted values may span lines and contain nested braces. Multiple entries can be placed in one block.

The parser intentionally does not evaluate BibTeX string macros, # concatenation, crossref inheritance, or LaTeX text-formatting commands. Unsupported constructs remain local to the reference note and never trigger network access.

Bibliography presets are lightweight, readable approximations. Plain, Abbreviated, Unsorted, Alphabetic label, IEEE-like, and ACM-like are not full BibTeX or CSL implementations and should not be used when publication-exact formatting is required. Duplicate citation keys are resolved deterministically: the entry in the alphabetically first note path wins, and duplicates are shown in settings.

Installation

Community plugins

After Cite is accepted into the Obsidian Community directory, search for Cite under Settings → Community plugins.

BRAT or manual beta

For beta testing, add PMGWork/obsidian-cite in BRAT. For a manual installation, download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the matching GitHub release and place them in .obsidian/plugins/cite/.

Privacy and security

Cite works entirely inside the vault. It does not make network requests, collect telemetry, show ads, require an account, or access files outside the configured reference folder except for rendering citations in the note currently being viewed.

Development

npm ci
npm run dev

Run the complete release check with npm run check. Production main.js is generated locally and attached to GitHub Releases; it is intentionally not committed.

License

MIT