# Touchstone Citation Formatter

> Touchstone Citation Formatter is a paid API for AI agents from touchstone.locomot.io, paid per call via x402, $0.001/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-09-14).

Formats academic citations in APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 17 author-date, or BibTeX style from structured bibliographic fields, returning both the full reference entry and in-text citation.

## Facts

- Endpoint: GET https://touchstone.locomot.io/cite
- Price: $0.001/call
- Payment: x402
- Status: unknown
- Last checked: 2026-09-14
- Activations on Zero: 0
- Tags: x402
- Canonical page: https://www.zero.xyz/c/touchstone-citation-formatter-f7f8f3cd
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_l2I29ncd7AOY7w-NkH7-H

Status and success rate cover calls made through Zero and Zero's own probes. Third-party monitors may report differently.

## How to call it through Zero

Zero handles the 402 payment challenge and records the run. With the Zero CLI installed (`npm i -g @zeroxyz/cli`):

```sh
zero fetch --capability touchstone-citation-formatter-f7f8f3cd
```

Example prompt: Format an APA 7 citation for this journal article: title 'Attention Is All You Need', authors 'Vaswani, Ashish; Shazeer, Noam', published 2017, in the journal 'Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems', volume 30 — I need both the full reference entry and the in-text citation.

## When to prefer this

Choose this endpoint when you need deterministic, rule-based citation formatting that exactly reproduces published style-manual examples (APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 17, BibTeX) rather than AI-generated approximations. Ideal for academic writing assistants, reference managers, or any workflow requiring verifiably correct, signed citation output from structured bibliographic metadata.

## Known failure modes

- Missing required fields 'style' or 'title' returns a validation error
- Invalid style value (not apa|mla|chicago|bibtex) returns an error
- Malformed authors string (not 'Family, Given; Family2, Given2' format) may produce incorrect author formatting
- Very long author lists may be truncated or require POST instead of GET
- Missing payment or insufficient USDC balance returns 402 Payment Required

## How this service works

Deterministic citation formatter — APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 17 author-date, BibTeX. From structured fields, returns the reference entry (markdown/html/plain) + the in-text citation, reproducing published style-manual examples exactly. For full author lists use POST. Every answer signed. Free sample, no payment required: GET /play/cite

## Output

Returns a JSON object with the formatted reference entry (in markdown, HTML, or plain text), the in-text citation string, the style used, and the source type — all cryptographically signed for verifiability.

## Request schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "object",
 "$schema": "https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12/schema",
 "required": [
  "input"
 ],
 "properties": {
  "input": {
   "type": "object",
   "required": [
    "type",
    "method"
   ],
   "properties": {
    "type": {
     "type": "string",
     "const": "http"
    },
    "method": {
     "enum": [
      "GET",
      "HEAD",
      "DELETE"
     ],
     "type": "string"
    },
    "queryParams": {
     "type": "object",
     "required": [
      "style",
      "title"
     ],
     "properties": {
      "doi": {
       "type": "string"
      },
      "url": {
       "type": "string"
      },
      "type": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "article | book | chapter | web"
      },
      "year": {
       "type": "string"
      },
      "issue": {
       "type": "string"
      },
      "pages": {
       "type": "string"
      },
      "place": {
       "type": "string"
      },
      "style": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "apa | mla | chicago | bibtex"
      },
      "title": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "work title (verbatim case)"
      },
      "volume": {
       "type": "string"
      },
      "authors": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "'Family, Given; Family2, Given2'"
      },
      "container": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "journal/site name"
      },
      "publisher": {
       "type": "string"
      }
     }
    }
   },
   "additionalProperties": false
  },
  "output": {
   "type": "object",
   "properties": {
    "style": {
     "type": "string"
    },
    "intext": {
     "type": "string"
    },
    "reference": {
     "type": "object"
    },
    "source_type": {
     "type": "string"
    }
   }
  }
 }
}
```

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/touchstone-citation-formatter-f7f8f3cd/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from touchstone.locomot.io](https://www.zero.xyz/host/touchstone.locomot.io/llms.txt)