Smoother citations: delete button, clearer chips, Cite above the selection, response markers, type-to-cite, and an optional tray

[ElliotDrel]

Note

🤖 Claude Opus 5.5 posting on behalf of Elliot

Making citations smoother to use

I quote assistant text with Cite all day, and a few rough edges add up. I've built each fix below as its own small PR, so you can judge the idea from working code and screenshots instead of a description. I'd love a yes, no, or "change it like this" on the direction for each one.

What's rough today

• Deleting vs. cancelling. The comment popup has no visible delete action. Cancel deletes a newly created citation, so "never mind the edit" and "remove this quote" are the same button.
• Composer chips. Neighbouring citations blur together as link-coloured text. The edit pencil sits right beside the quote icon and is easy to miss.
• The Cite button. It's small and low-contrast, and it appears at the bottom-right of the selection. Other tools put the action centered just above the selection, where your eye already is.
• Finding what you've cited. While scrolling a long response, nothing shows which passages are already in your draft.
• Typing or dictating. With text selected, typing or dictation (Wispr Flow and similar tools paste their text) goes to the composer, and the selection is lost.
• Many quotes in one message. Inline chips are great for placing a quote in a sentence. When you collect several quotes to discuss, a single "N annotations" tray above the composer (like Codex) is easier to review.

Proposed PRs, one problem each

1. Delete button; Cancel only closes. fix(web): citation comments get a Delete button, and Cancel no longer deletes #32550 (open, with before/after screenshots)
2. Citation chips become distinct pills. Clicking a chip opens its comment at the quoted text, and the separate pencil goes away. feat(web): click a citation chip to edit its comment #32579
3. Cite button centered above the selection, in the same spot whichever way you drag. It flips below when there's no room. This also avoids the stray-click problem fix(web): Cite button opens below the selection, not under the pointer #29218 addresses. fix(web): the Cite button sits centered above the selection #32571
4. Numbered markers in the response next to passages cited in the current draft. Clicking one opens that citation. feat(web): numbered markers for draft citations in the conversation #32602
5. Opt-in setting so typing or pasting with text selected cites it, with the input as the comment. The default keeps today's behavior. feat(web): optionally cite selected text by typing #32600
6. Opt-in citation tray (setting: inline by default, or tray). Each citation can be moved between the tray and the text. The wire format is unchanged. feat(web): optional citation tray #32615

Everything is web and desktop only. Nothing changes on the server, in shared types, or on mobile. Settings default to today's behavior. The changes were tested with the free Replay provider on an empty database.

Open question: Cite button placement, replace or toggle?

Today the Cite button appears where the drag ended (bottom-right for left-to-right selections, top-right for right-to-left). It's close to the pointer but hard to predict. #32571 always puts it centered above the selection, so you can move toward it before looking. Should that replace the current behavior, or be a setting (near the pointer / above the selection)? A toggle keeps both camps happy but adds a setting and two placement paths to maintain. I lean toward replacing it, but it's your call.

Open question: matching composer citations to their markers

With numbered markers in the response (#32602), how should each citation in the composer show which marker it belongs to, so it's obvious which chip goes with which passage? Options I see:

• The same number on the chip. A small number badge at the start of each composer chip, styled like the marker in the response. It reads at a glance and works on touch screens.
• Hover/focus linking only. Hovering or focusing a chip highlights its marker and passage, and the reverse. There's no extra visual noise, but nothing is visible until you hover, and touch screens have no hover.
• Colour coding. Each citation gets a colour. This runs out of distinct colours quickly and doesn't work for colour-blind users.

My suggestion is to put the same number on the chip and also highlight the matching marker on hover. Both sides already number from the citation's order in the draft, so they can't drift apart. #32602 now does this, with screenshots. Happy to change it if you prefer another option.

Which of these do you want, and what would you change?

[prateek11rai]

Note

🤖 claude on behalf of Prateek

A daily-use note on citations.

I often hit Cite by accident while selecting text (#29209). Moving the button away from the pointer is a clear improvement, so +1 to #34839 and #32571.

One gap remains: when I notice the mistake, I click outside the popover, and the empty citation stays in the composer. Could a new citation that I dismiss without typing anything be discarded? A typed comment should still be kept, and Save or Enter with an empty comment could keep a bare quote.

This matters more if #32550 lands, since Cancel would keep it too.