{"pageUrl":"https://promagen.com/how-claude-chooses-citations","lastModified":"2026-05-10","provenanceHash":"sha256:3975575f1fb613b9bf72bebe025544815c547b012e979e0e2b255ab5acf5384d","provenanceNote":"Claude bot names and robots.txt compliance reference Anthropic's published crawler documentation. Context-window and capability details reference docs.claude.com. This page does not claim knowledge of Anthropic's internal retrieval or ranking algorithms.","claims":[{"id":"claim-three-claude-bots","statement":"Anthropic publicly documents ClaudeBot, Claude-User, and Claude-SearchBot as three independently controllable user agents. All three honour robots.txt allow/disallow rules per Anthropic's published crawler documentation.","evidenceUrl":"https://support.claude.com/en/articles/8896518-does-anthropic-crawl-data-from-the-web-and-how-can-site-owners-block-the-crawler","lastVerified":"2026-05-10","hash":"sha256:a9f8b00e736d50b35b49dbefc2aeb7807695b67b8cb0437437a107f4847b5863"},{"id":"claim-anthropic-no-ranking-publish","statement":"Anthropic publicly documents Claude's crawler behaviour and model capabilities (including context windows) but does not publish a complete citation ranking algorithm. Specific claims about Claude internal ranking weights are inference, not vendor contract.","evidenceUrl":"https://docs.claude.com","lastVerified":"2026-05-10","hash":"sha256:bbc6264cfb1317707ee8493ffe49f391655d28362f9103919001a3e1c9eefc1d"},{"id":"claim-mode-dependent-citations","statement":"Claude's citation behaviour is mode-dependent: inline citations appear when invoked with retrieval (web access, document context, or specific system prompts); pure model-knowledge responses without retrieval typically do not include citations. This is observably consistent in Claude.ai web mode.","evidenceUrl":"https://promagen.com/sentinel/weekly","lastVerified":"2026-05-10","hash":"sha256:99547337c48972279a5c0fecbaba37193b9bc0a91ed716a95d32fadae10e6eda"}]}