> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.consensus.app/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Citation Grounding > Citation Grounding shows the exact quote behind every citation in a Consensus answer. Hover to see the passage, click to jump to it in the paper. Every claim in a Consensus answer is tied to a real paper. Citation Grounding goes one step further: it shows you the exact passage in that paper that supports the claim. It's a verification layer. Rather than asking you to trust AI search on faith, Consensus lets you check the evidence behind each sentence in seconds. ## How it works * **Hover a citation** to see the quote from the paper that supports the statement. * **Click the quote** to open the paper at that exact passage, in its original context. * **Open the Evidence tab** on a paper to see every quote Consensus pulled from it for your search. Grounding works best on papers where Consensus has full text. Through [publisher partnerships](/get-started/full-text-access#where-full-text-comes-from) (Wiley, Taylor & Francis, SAGE, ACS, APA, AAAS, Oxford University Press, and others), open-access PDFs, and your own uploads, Consensus can look beyond the abstract to find the supporting passage. See [Full text access](/get-started/full-text-access). A Consensus answer with a citation card showing the quoted sentence from the paper, next to the paper's PDF with that sentence highlighted ## Reading the signals | Signal | Meaning | | ----------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Checkmark on a citation | The full text of the paper was used in the analysis | | No checkmark | Only the abstract was used | | Colored citations | When a Consensus Meter is shown, citations are colored by the paper's stance | The **Citations** panel in a thread lists every paper cited across the conversation. A Pro answer with a citation card open showing the Used full text badge ## Where it appears Citation Grounding applies to AI-generated answers in the Consensus web app: Pro messages and Deep searches. The MCP server and API return paper metadata and key takeaways rather than per-claim quotes. ## Why it matters Consensus is built on a simple rule: if the system can't ground an answer in real evidence, it won't make one up. Citation Grounding makes that rule visible. You can audit any sentence, catch a paper cited for something it never claimed, and move from an answer to the primary source without leaving the page. Combine Citation Grounding with a [citation verification workflow](/use-cases/citation-verification) to audit an entire bibliography. ## Related How Consensus reads paywalled papers. The agent that produces grounded answers.