CITATION.cff

# How to cite Cairn.
#
# Citation File Format 1.2.0 (https://citation-file-format.github.io), which
# GitHub reads directly to render a "Cite this repository" panel. There is no
# sibling convention in this project's other repositories to follow, so this
# uses the format's own.
#
# `version` here is `cairn.__version__` and `pyproject.toml`'s, and a test
# holds all three together — tests/test_cli.py, TestTheVersionIsRecordedOnce.
# A version recorded in three places is a version that will disagree with
# itself, which is the argument this repository makes about plumbline.pin.
cff-version: 1.2.0
message: >-
  If you refer to this work, please cite it using the metadata below. It is a
  reference implementation rather than a service: the citable thing is the
  design and the evidence, both of which live in the repository at a commit.
title: "Cairn: a grounded-or-silent reference assistant for public agencies"
abstract: >-
  Cairn answers questions only from a corpus an operator supplies, quotes its
  sources verbatim rather than paraphrasing them, and refuses plainly when no
  passage clears its relevance threshold. It is built as a reference
  implementation of that behaviour and of the machinery for proving it: an
  operator explain mode that attributes a bad answer to the stage that caused
  it, three languages including a right-to-left one, an accessible interface,
  and a fail-closed continuous-integration gate that grades a committed
  evidence bundle with an external auditor pinned to an exact commit. The
  runtime has no dependencies and no model.
type: software
authors:
  - family-names: Kelly-Reif
    given-names: Chelsea
repository-code: "https://github.com/ChelseaKR/cairn"
url: "https://github.com/ChelseaKR/cairn"
license: Apache-2.0
version: 0.3.0
# The date 0.2.0 landed on `main`, matching its CHANGELOG.md section. The
# annotated tag was cut afterwards; the version is the citable thing, and the
# two agree.
date-released: "2026-08-23"
keywords:
  - retrieval-augmented generation
  - grounded question answering
  - citations
  - refusal
  - public sector
  - civic technology
  - evaluation
  - accessibility