Cited
Docs Search With Citations
Overview
Docs have the answers, they're just spread across fifty pages. Finding one usually means a search box that matches keywords, a sidebar you scan by guessing, and a row of open tabs you keep switching between.
AI chat tools fix the searching, but they bring a new problem. The answer reads well, and you have no idea which part came from the docs and which part the model filled in on its own.
I wanted both: the speed of asking a question, and the confidence of reading the source.
That idea became Cited.
What Cited Is
Cited is a search for documentation. You ask a question and it finds the answer across the docs, citing every line it used.
Every claim in an answer carries a small numbered citation. Hover it, or tap it on a phone, and a card opens with the exact passage the claim came from and a link to the page. You never have to take the answer on trust.
If the docs don't cover what you asked, Cited says so and answers from general knowledge, with no citations. It never mixes the two, so a cited answer always means the docs actually said it.
Features
Inline Citations
This is the core of the product. Answers stream in with citations placed at the end of each sentence, and every source used is listed under the answer. The hover card shows the passage itself, so checking a claim takes a second instead of a new tab.
Index Any Docs Link
Paste a link and Cited reads the pages under it, up to thirty, then splits and embeds them. You can watch each step happen: pages being read, chunks being embedded, and starter questions being written for that site.
On the live demo this is turned off to protect the API keys, and five docs sites come preloaded: Next.js, React, Tailwind, Vue and the Python tutorial.
Search Across Every Site
There's no picking which docs to search. Every question is matched against every indexed site at once, so a question about Tailwind classes inside a Next.js component can pull from both.
Follow-up Threads
Questions build on each other. A follow-up like "what about server components?" is searched both on its own and together with the previous question, so it finds the right pages without dragging every new topic back to the old one.
Focus Mode
Long answers can be read in focus mode. Press F and everything except the paragraph you're reading fades back, with a small pill showing how much reading is left.
Model Fallback
Answers come from Claude by default. If a model is busy or fails, Cited moves to the next one in line and shows the switch in the steps, so you still get an answer instead of an error.
How It Works
Under the hood Cited is retrieval-augmented generation, split into two halves: indexing a site once, and answering questions against it.
Architecture
I kept the stack small on purpose. Every piece is something I could read end to end, with no vector database or framework hiding how retrieval actually works.
Design Decisions
The whole product is about trust, so the interface has to make checking an answer feel effortless rather than like extra work.
- Sources Stay In Place.Citations open a card right where you're reading instead of sending you to another page, so you never lose your spot in the answer.
- Show The Work.While an answer is being written, the steps show what Cited is doing and which sections of the docs it's reading, so the wait feels like progress rather than a spinner.
- One Input.The same field takes a question or a link and works out which one you meant, so there's nothing to learn before using it.
- Honest About Gaps.When the docs don't have the answer, the interface says so plainly instead of dressing a guess up as a cited answer.
- Built For Phones Too. Hover cards become tap cards, and the input docks to the bottom of the screen once an answer starts, so the whole flow works one-handed.